Introduction In my post Compression – the technology for the digital age, I called data compression “the enabler of the evolving media-rich communication society that we value”. Indeed, data compression has freed the potential of digital technologies in facsimile, speech, photography, music, television, video on the web, on mobile, and more. MPEG has been the main contributor to the stellar performance of the digital media industries: content, services and devices - hardware and software. Something new is brewing in MPEG because…

The apex of Renaissance was around the middle of the 15th-16th centuries. Learned men freely communicated with the feeling of belonging to a whole that was shared by their minds and by definition borderless. No other man better symbolises the community of minds that hovered the geographical expression called Europe than Erasmus of Rotterdam. Then came Martin Luther and decades of religion wars. Other wars sought to establish ever stronger national identities. The common language itself - Latin - still…

When I was a kid and was free from school, I used to help my mother in a market place close to our town where she run a bench. Our primary task was to sell wares (of course). The task second in importance was to make sure that the wares on display did not “inadvertently” end up in the pockets of some onlookers. We, the sellers, applied the caveat venditor (let the seller beware) principle and bewared. I happened to…

2018/05/10 Thirty years ago this day, in Ottawa, ON, some 29 experts from 6 countries attended the 1st meeting of the Moving Picture Experts Group, to become universally known as MPEG. Twenty-five days ago, in San Diego, CA, 20 times the MPEG experts of the 1st meeting attended the 122nd MPEG meeting. These 30 years have been an incredible ride. MPEG’s mission is to produce digital media standards and MPEG did it through without exemption. Here are some facts MPEG…

MPEG has developed standards that are used daily by billions of people. A non exhaustive list includes MP3, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), MPEG-2 Systems and Video, Advanced Video Coding (AVC), MP4 File Format, DASH. Other MPEG standards were widely used in the past but their use is gradually fading out, such MPEG-1 Video, and MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2. This because MPEG is always ready to exploit the latest technology innovations to create new standards that offer new advantages because they…

In a now distant­ past companies used to be run by engineers. If a company had the right product – backed by good research and developed, indeed, by engineers – people would buy it. Then having a good product was not sufficient and many companies decided that the company had to be run by marketers. Then having a good marketing was not sufficient and so many companies decided that accountants should run them. Eventually many companies were run by lawyers…