MPEG was established as an experts group on 1988/01/22 in Copenhagen, a little more that 32 tears ago. At that time, content media were already very important: voice communication; vinyl, compact cassettes, compact discs for audio; radio, mostly on terrestrial Hertzian channels; and television on 4 physical media: terrestrial Hertzian channels, satellite, cable and package media. The way individual media evolved was a result of the technology adopted to represent content media and the way content media were distributed. Industry…

Introduction The MPEG trajectory is not the trajectory of an Information Technology (IT) group. Today software plays a key role in MPEG standard development. However, MPEG it is not an IT group. For MPEG, software is a tool to achieve the goal of producing excellent standards. But software remains a tool. Clearly, because MPEG assembles so many industries, with so many different agendas. There are MPEG members for which software is more than a tool. In this article I will…

Introduction In past publications, I have often talked about how many times MPEG has changed its skin during its 3-decade long life. In this article I would like to add substance to this claim by giving a rather complete, albeit succinct, account. You can find a more detailed story at Riding the Media Bits. The early years MPEG-1 MPEG started with the idea of creating a video coding standard for interactive video on compact disc (CD). The idea of opening…

Introduction Quality pervades our life: we talk of quality of life and we choose things on the basis of declared or perceived quality. A standard is a product, and as such may also be judged, although not exclusively, in terms of its quality. MPEG standards are no exception and the quality of MPEG standards has been a feature has considered of paramount importance since its early days. Cosmesis is related to quality, but is a different beast. You can apply…