Microsoft plots MPEG maneuvers.

Electronic News, June 19, 1995 by Anthony Cataldo

REDMOND, WASH.--Microsoft Corp.'s plans later this year to ship a software development kit supporting MPEG-1 decoder software based on technology licensed from Mediamatics Corp. (EN, June 12) could boost prospects for MPEG-hardware in the long-run.

MPEG hardware vendors believe that PC users will be more inclined to upgrade to hardware-based MPEG after getting a feel for the baseline software-only codec. "This is going to help our business a lot," said David Taylor, C-Cube Microsystem's director of marketing. "Software decoding will essentially allow people to play with MPEG. For some, it will be adequate. For others, they will need hardware assist. These people may not go out to buy a $200 card without playing with it first."

The developers kit will enable support running MPEG titles on the upcoming Windows 95 operating system using Mediamatics Corp.'s Arcade Player. According to Microsoft, the software codec running on a 90MHz Pentium-based system will enable CD-ROM playback at about 24 frames per second with 11KHz audio.

The minimum system requirements call for a 75MHz Pentium, 8MB of RAM and a video accelerator card that can perform color space conversion and scaling (EN, Aug. 29, 1994). "You can look at this in terms of the lowest common denominator video," said David Britton, Microsoft's group marketing manager for Windows 95 multimedia.

Microsoft is scheduled to release its new operating system in August.

"It's fair to say that Windows 95 will be capable of software-only MPEG, it just won't be in the product," Mr. Britton said. "We think this will jump start the developers to use MPEG as a video format."

MPEG--an open industry standard--has thus far been relegated to niche markets where users are willing to pay extra for a special add-in cards, leaving title development stagnant because of the limited use.

Terms of the agreement between Mediamatics and Microsoft were not disclosed. Mr. Britton said the company chose Mediamatics' soft-ware-based decoder over competitors' solutions--such as CompCore Multimedia--because "it looked like a good fit from a business and technology perspective."

Mediamatics technology is based on a collaborative compression scheme that divides the operations between the CPU and video controller. Mediamatics is a member of the Open MPEG (OM-1) consortium, which developed a set of application programming interfaces for Windows that was adopted by Microsoft last July.

To start the MPEG drive, Microsoft said it plans to include MPEG clips in its future release of its popular Encarta interactive encyclopedia. That would leave hardware vendors with the task of determining the best way to implement more creative uses for MPEG, said Prem Nath, president of Mediamatics. For example, hardware vendors can begin to look at mingling motion video with 3-D graphics. "If you want to lower CPU utilization, you would go with hardware, and that would lead to more sophisticated uses of MPEG," he said.

The developers' kit is expected to be available to independent software vendors (ISVs) in the second half of 1995. OEMs and ISVs would then bundle elements of the kit with their MPEG titles or add-in card.

Still to be seen is how much Microsoft's new support for MPEG affects proprietary software playback also offered under Windows, such as Cinepak and Indeo. Mr. Britton said the MPEG option is intended to widen Microsoft's spectrum of available codecs. "There's a huge base of software that uses Indeo and Cinepak," he said. "Our goal is to provide a choice to developers."

Intel, which developed the Indeo codec, was not surprised by the Microsoft announcement. "Microsoft likes standards," said Stan Mo, senior marketing manager for multimedia technologies at Intel Architecture Labs. "This helps them fill out their multimedia portfolio. The one major hole from a standards perspective that they had to fill was MPEG."

Mr. Mo said MPEG technology takes up a considerable amount of CPU bandwidth and has taken too long to nail down as an industry standard. "If we had to rely on MPEG hardware and software, we wouldn't have any video titles," he said. "The codec being blown out of the stores is Indeo."

Denying industry speculation that it will eventually adopt the MPEG standard, Intel said its newest version of Indeo, which is scheduled for release in 3Q, will include major improvements. It will include object-oriented graphics integration, MPEG-quality video, and 3D capability--all while leaving the lion's share of the CPU untouched, Mr. Mo said.

"An end-user will not choose a title just because it is an MPEG title. And ISVs care about what allows them to add new functionality," Mr. Mo said. "The application is where it has to be. The technology cannot become the application."