Comments on: Amazon’s Video Streaming Service Goes Live – As A Trial

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:45:09 +0000

You can start a religious war over H.264 vs. VC-1. Lots of video compressionists will argue that one is superior to the other for various reasons. Just saying VC-1 is nearly equal to H.264 will set some H.264 adherents frothing. I agree that they’re not that dissimilar in the big picture. And Moonlight for Linux is an interesting project. But I don’t see VC-1 getting the same level of broad support as MPEG-4/H.264 has, certainly not in the near term.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:04:25 +0000

Thanks, Mega. I agree with the analysis, and the fact that h.264 is the most likely, but that doesn’t mean its the one they picked. I can imagine a business decision could be made because Microsoft goosed things a little (promo $, free stuff), to get them to support Silverlight. I’ll note for example that Netflix streaming uses VC-1. Microsoft implemented Silverlight on both Macs and PCs (though Netflix doesn’t work on Macs, interesting…), and a Silverlight implementation for Linux is coming from the open source community. VC-1 is very similar to h.264, and nearly its equal on quality. As you say of course h.264 has the momentum, at least in hardware/ASIC implementations…

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:25:12 +0000

I haven’t seen anything that definitely says it is H.264, but I’d be surprised if it isn’t. Right now there are pretty much only two candidate codecs – H.264 and VC-1. And H.264 is the absolutely dominant codec. Since Amazon has said they’re looking to partner with TV and Internet vendors, it is very doubtful they’d use anything that wasn’t a major codec – no lesser used codecs. And since H.264 is widely implemented in newer gear it is the logical choice.

Remember, Silverlight and Flash are frameworks, not codecs. There are codecs under the covers. Flash has support for several codecs – VP6, Spark, Wildform, and even H.264. Silverlight is, of course, built on Windows Media – it supports WMV1, WMV2, WMV3, WMVA, and WMVC1 (aka VC-1) for video, and WMA7, WMA8, WMA9, and MP3 for audio. There have been many rumors to the effect that MS will add H.264 support to Silverlight, and I think they should if only because H.264 is the dominant codec for online video and a global standard accepted by ISO and the ITU (Yes, VC-1 is set by the SMPTE, not really the same level as ISO or ITU).

But, even if not, the decoder in the S3 and HD also handles VC-1 – if TiVo enables it in software, of course.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:12:37 +0000

Agreed we’re not going to see streaming HD. Its going to be a download option at best. Progressive download where you can sometimes watch it as it downloads, but that’s as close as we’re going to get. PC World’s review suggested that the Unbox streaming was smaller/less detailed than NetFlix Watch Now, which suggests it might not even look that good blown up to TV size. We’ll have to wait and see of course.

Is there any evidence that Unbox streaming is using h.264? They could easily be using Silverlight or Flash or some Microsoft WMV/VC-1 codec, though the latter isn’t likely since it apparently works on Macs…

By: MegaZone

MegaZone — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:08:06 +0000

People jumping at shadows. It isn’t helped by some blogs phrasing it like the streaming service is replacing Unbox. Wired did that, as did some others. I’ve seen confusion about that now in a few forums and on a few blogs. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to dump downloads and go strictly streaming – the downloads support PMPs and people taking laptops on the road and flights, for example. They’re complimentary, and offering both is a competitive advantage over services that do just downloads (iTunes) or just streaming (Netflix).

As for the quote – I thought that was just sign up information, didn’t think of it as special beta info. It isn’t anything not already said in public anyway.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:58:17 +0000

PS MZ, I think the direct citation effectively breaks your NDA.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:56:38 +0000

The Amazon rep in the NYT article says they’ll offer both streaming AND downloads. This is essentially an expansion and rebranding of their videos services. There’s some chatter of the TCF, people worried Amazon won’t be available on TiVo going forward. TiVo has confirmed for me that is NOT the case.