Microsoft is delaying the development of DVD-Rom titles. They won't support MCI........................................
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DVD API is to Tax Code as Microsoft Is to IRS?
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Jan Ozer EMedia Professional, November 1997
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<Picture: [DVD Professional Conference]>You may not know that in an earlier life I was a tax attorney and CPA. I got worn out by the constant change. A rookie tax goob in 1980, the year of the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), it took me two months to figure out which end was up. This was followed by three additional tax acts in the next four years, each requiring many late nights and weekends so I could serve my clients without committing malpractice. Working with the Internal Revenue Service was also wearing. The IRS had all the power, set all the laws, and never seemed to be quite clear about what they were doing, not to mention why. They certainly never seemed to care about serving the taxpayers who paid their salaries.
Microsoft's refusal to support MCI means that there's no standardized approach to calling an MPEG-2 video file from a DVD title.
Rules could be so obscure that energetic rereading yielded only glazed eyes, sweating, and pounding on desks. Of course, you could call five or six experts, but you'd get just as many different answers, and calling the IRS resulted in overly literal, practically useless answers, and always two or three days if not weeks too late.
So I got into the computer business. Started studying video playback and development architectures. It's like IRS deja vu.
In 1995, Video for Windows, the programming interface used by developers to work with video, became ActiveMovie, but only briefly, before converting to DirectShow in 1996. The Windows video playback architecture shifted from the Video Device Interface to the Display Control Interface in a matter of months in late 1994, morphing into ActiveMovie under cover of night, just before the release of Windows 95. Soon thereafter it became DirectX, not, of course, to be confused with ActiveX or BrandX.
Not that I'm opposed to change, mind you, and most of the architectural changes listed previously were for the better. It's just that sometimes the Microsoft monolith setting all the rules doesn't seem clearly set about what they're doing, not to mention why. Take DVD for example, and the changeover from the MCI-based MPEG-2 interface to DirectShow. Both MCI and DirectShow are application programming interfaces, or APIs.
Now, APIs are serious business, and the ties that bind. They're mini programs or drivers that allow a software program to access services provided by another program or hardware device. In the MPEG-2 case, the API is the digital buttons pushed by the DVD movie or game to make the MPEG-2 decoder play the movie from the disc. It's what will enable the hundreds of planned DVD titles to play on the dozen or so DVD/MPEG-2/AC-3 upgrade kits and DVD-Video players. It's what makes the software that sells the hardware work.
Today, virtually every developer working on a DVD-ROM title is using the MCI interface to play the MPEG-2 video, since it's the only interface that exists. If you're developing DVD with MPEG-2 today, you have to use MCI.
But Microsoft is refusing to support the MCI MPEG-2 interface, and instead is pushing developers towards an API called DirectShow that should ship before the end of 1997. DirectShow has all the earmarks of a great interface, with the potential to enable much more integrated forms of multimedia. But the problem is that DirectShow is not yet here, and that none of the DVD-ROM kits currently shipping support it. Which means that if you take Microsoft's advice, you won't have an installed base to ship into until well after Christmas 1997.
Basically, Microsoft's refusal to support MCI means that there's no standardized approach to calling an MPEG-2 video file from a DVD title. Every DVD-ROM drive vendor has to make up its own API, and every title vendor has to guess which calls will make a video window open, and video play.
Intel recently sponsored an event called Plug-Fest, where 35 developers got to test their titles on 15 hardware solutions offered by computer manufacturers and DVD-ROM upgrade kit vendors. One title developer reported problems with 13 out of 15 computers, and ultimately decided to forego further DVD-ROM development until the market stabilized.
Now, bundling DVD titles helps, because the titles can be tweaked to ensure compatibility with the bundled hardware. But in a dynamic market experiencing frequent new product introductions, it's almost impossible for a retail title to support all the new players, which means titles don't play reliably, customers get frustrated, and the DVD-ROM market gets a bad name before it even gets started. So, Microsoft decides to forego MCI support for MPEG-2 and we lose the chance for a retail DVD-ROM Christmas this year.
But what gets my goat is the FUD--Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt--that Microsoft is sowing about how MCI-based titles will work with Memphis, now called Windows 98, which is scheduled to ship in early 1998. If you're a title developer, your most significant concern is whether machines upgrading to Windows 98 will continue to run your titles, or whether your meager first-year profits will be consumed by a rush of technical support costs. Likewise, if you're a DVD-ROM drive vendor, you'll be caring about whether your equipment will continue to run under the new OS and how many additional phone lines you'll need for technical support.
Well, I downloaded all the DirectShow and Memphis information I could find. Read them over and over. No epiphanies. So I called the industry experts who are charged with setting the development direction for their organizations. I got a disturbing range of answers.
I spoke to two representatives of the technical working group from the Software Publishing Association that is trying to develop a standard MCI-MPEG-2 command set for use with pre-DirectShow titles. Both fellows stated that DVD-ROM titles installed on a Windows 95 computer won't run after upgrading to Windows 98 without additional "interpreter" software that won't be included in Windows 98.
I spoke to two developers of MPEG-2 playback products, one hardware, one software. The hardware vendor said that the DVD title wouldn't run. The software vendor stated, "Microsoft has been vague-- almost deliberately so--but it's inconceivable that someone with 50 DVD titles could upgrade to Windows 98 and have them all stop working. Microsoft has always gone to extreme lengths to maintain backwards compatibility."
Two DVD-ROM upgrade kit vendors stated that DVD titles would continue to run. One title developer said he wasn't sure, but would hold off on shipping a title until he was sure. Another said he wasn't sure, but would provide a patch if his titles didn't. Another said that it was Microsoft's plan for continued compatibility, but that anything could happen when the final code was released.
I went to the source, asking Microsoft the very same questions via email, and they acknowledged the questions--and the deadline I was quite clear about--and promised me an answer and then didn't deliver. So I don't know the answer, and now, neither do you.
All in all, it's hauntingly similar to working with the IRS.
It isn't responsible of Microsoft to create FUD--at best through their poor job of addressing the issues of compatibility, and at worst as part of an intentional effort to coerce software developers into following a course that benefits Microsoft's vision--all at the expense of first-year DVD-ROM retail sales.
Jan Ozer is a contributing editor for EMedia Professional. President of Norcross, Georgia-based Doceo Publishing, a multimedia title developer, and publisher of the Video Compression Sampler series, Ozer consults widely on digital video and is at work on the second edition of his book Video Compression for Multimedia, published by AP Professional.
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