Didier LeGall almost 5 years ago.......................
electronicnews.com
Embraced by many members of the semiconductor community, MPEG-4 does have its critics. Didier LeGall, for one, is C-Cube Microsystems' CTO and VP of R&D, and served as chairman of the MPEG committee during development of the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards.
``Most of the people I know of believe MPEG-4 is a solution in search of a problem,'' said Mr. LeGall. ``In fact, it isn't much of a solution at all.''
Mr. LeGall views the MPEG-4 subcommittee's claims as fantastical, and said what actual research is taking place is being driven primarily at the behest of European governments with little or no market experience. Envisioneering's Mr. Doherty countered that Europe, with its sparse cable television infrastructure, is an ideal environment to pursue a new data transmission format.
``You don't do research in a standards committee. You do research in a research environment,'' Mr. LeGall said. ``MPEG-4, by breaking loose in a sense (from its original purpose), doesn't have a goal or a direction. They'll finalize something that doesn't make sense from an industry perspective.''
``Like Didier, I am a bit skeptical, but at the same time I think it could come up with results which could have great significance,'' added Dimitris Anastassiou, a professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, director of the school's Image Technology for New Media center and an MPEG researcher.
``As a university, it provides a great opportunity for our students to work on these items. I think many of the results will come out in the next 10 years, not right away, but I am following it with great interest.''
Mr. LeGall agreed that the effort it takes to port a new algorithm to hardware will exceed the MPEG-4 standard adoption timetable intimated by the MPEG committee.
``The schedule is not consistent with the difficulty of the invention,'' he said. ``If you really want to do a good job at providing video compression across platforms, you have to give it time. But they are stuck with having to publish something very soon, and I don't think they have a clue.
``MPEG-4 hardware is very, very far away if it even will exist, which I doubt. But I would love to be proven wrong.'' |
