Skip to content
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
No, never been
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
In a way it was a forerunner, got the future right and by choosing an asymmetric coding allowed its implementation in an effective way
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
The transformation of the music value chain landscape that opened the door to many other changes
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
By fuelling digitalisation it opened the door to many evolution unthinkable in the analogue world. In this sense it promoted research
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
I have just been a user…
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
Yes,
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Yes
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
To move into the semantic space
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
Yes, I was an active member and contributor for 18 years, especially to MPEG-4 and after that to MPEG-E and MPEG-V.
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
The members representing major research institutes and businesses from the major parts of the world that define the future of digital technologies.
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
The international acceptance as being an ISO (backed) organization.
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
Yes, it certainly is as it offers researchers to disseminate, publish and standardize their research results, if needed in a fair competition.
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
Only positive experiences, both with respect to the community and its members as well as a place to disseminate, both from a scientific as well as a commercial point of view, the results of the various international research projects (ITEA) I initiated and executed over a period of more then 20 years, EUROPA (MPEG-4), ROBOCOP, SPACE4U, TRUST4ALL (MPEG-E) and METAVERSE1 (MPEG-V).
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
Yes, however mostly with the video and related audio standards.
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Yes as they have an worldwide coverage and are developed in an open and fair competition.
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Digital supported trading, finance and safety.
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
For almost 20 years I have been representing Philips Electronics in MPEG.
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
MPEG is the focal point for the industry at large to establish generic (worldwide) standards on digital audiovisual coding. MPEG is special because, when relevant, MPEG can bring together the expertise required to achieve this goal.
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
The most important impact of MPEG is on providing digital audiovisual content for consumers. For example, MPEG standards made possible the very successful market introduction of optical media: initially CD-video and DVD, followed by BluRay. Furthermore, there was major impact on the digital broadcast industry, in particular on Digital TV broadcast. Finally, MPEG has been very important for audiovisual content exchange on the internet using computers and mobile devices.
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
MPEG provided a very effective platform for research on audiovisual coding. Joint research efforts were probably never so successful. From research perspective, MPEG has an excellent track record; the percentage of successful projects in MPEG is substantially higher than in typical company research environments.
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
Working with MPEG friends from all involved industries widens your scope, as an MPEG standard needs not only to solve your own problems, but also those of other participants. To achieve common understanding of all relevant issues and working on a standard to address those, is highly enjoyable and rewarding. It’s a very nice mix of technical and political challenges.
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
An MPEG standard is often technically not the most optimum solution for one specific application, as typically compromises are needed to make the (generic) standard also suitable for other applications. However, the generic nature of MPEG standards proves essential for its success on the market place.
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Market driven MPEG standards are the right choice, but as in other research environments, there are also less market driven MPEG standards with insufficient industry support.
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Hopefully, MPEG continues to offer an effective joint (research) environment for developing audiovisual coding standards. The impact of MPEG as enabler of new features on the market place may become less critical, but new application area’s may offer further exciting challenges.
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
Yes, I have been
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
It was a very active group working on reference models, which is a way to promote verifiable research, and also it is the perfect group for technology transfer from research in visual communications to the industry.
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
MPEG has been the enabler for making TV and HDTV digital and expanded further the possibilities of many other kinds of visual communications
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
As an academic researcher, the MPEG meeting are allowing to access front-end research and the use of verification models and quality and compliance tests. However, academics should remain academics and the time devoted to pure speculative research and the time devoted to standardization groups has to be well balanced.
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
I started my engineer career and research career in the kick-off meeting of a European research project on digital TV named IVICO, led by Leonardo. MPEG appeared after that. MPEG has had a strong influence on my research field. Moreover, the challenges raised in image compression, led to developments which have been at the origin of many other research topics (image analysis, medical imaging …).
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
Of course, I like them!
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Yes
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Maybe a grand challenge for the future of image communications, is trusted distributed learning (based on deep learning) on video flows for many different kinds of applications
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
Yes
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
Firstly, MPEG is a great place which have attracted many people who are from different industries, which is very useful to collect various requirements from different industries and make the standard successful;
Secondly, MPEG (ISO/IEC) has an experienced procedure to develop standards and guarantee its quality, in spite of it is not very high efficient sometimes;
Thirdly, originally patent pool is an effective means to encourage participants to make a good standard, then they can share the profit by the achievement of the standard. (now it seems the situation is getting complicated)
Fourthly, a good SDO leader is the navigation light to lead the direction, as the MPEG chair, you did a very good job.
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
MPEG standards are widely used in different industries, especially in consumer electronic products which has changed people’s daily life.
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
Partly agree, sometimes research is more look ahead.
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
Memorable, I’m also proud to have participate in MPEG which benefit people’s daily life.
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
In general I am
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Yes
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Firstly, strengthen cooperation with othe SDOs, as far as possible to make a unify standard;
- Secondly, MPEG make a lot of standards, some of them may need a simplified procedure to be quickly finished to satisfy market need.
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
Yes, in different companies though Philips & Harmonic for 30 years!
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
This is the single point of standardisation for audio/video/system in the media distribution industry. It is special in the sense it address not only media, but all the broadcast, unicast delivery mechanisms, with ONE unified view.
What I like with MPEG is it pacing with the market: MPEG2 for SD first digital TV launched in 1995 , MPEG-4 AVC for HD & IPTV launch in 2003, HEVC for OTT streaming & UHD in 2013 and coming VVC in 2020 for all the different use cases from very low bitrates for Mobile video in emerging markets to VR & 8K for Gb/s networks.
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
Single standard for storage media and broadcast in 1992 and after. This has evolved to unicast delivery with MPEG DASH.
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
Yes, as all researchers on the planet can exchange and more important be challenged by their peers. This is what makes MPEG unique, and of course all based on experiments results, not only theoretical discussions like in many other SDOs.
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
I have started in 1991 with MPEG-1. At that time this was a crazy project with only tens of people in the room. Then we got the attention of broadcast industry and the MPEG-2 adventure got started. This has been a very pleasant ride. We all should be grateful to have Leonardo Chiariglione, our godfather, to have created such an ecosystem.
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
Yes but not happy with the way licensing is handled outside of MPEG. We have escaped the disaster with AVC, under the VC-1 threat, and currently suffering the HEVC licensing “situation” let us see if AV1 can improve the current situation. For VVC, we now have MC-IF talking the bull by the horns.
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Yes provided it can be licensed, see HEVC situation.
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Included the licensability of the technology in the definition of a new standard. This is hard, but critical. VVC seems to be on the right track, we shall see.
- Are you or have you been an MPEG member?
Yes, proudly
- What do you think makes MPEG special?
Because it brings industries, universities and research centers together in one room to work hard; because it allows individuals to grow know-how and competencies, to express their potential and creativity on breakthrough technologies
- What do you think is the most important MPEG impact?
Impact was through ground breaking technologies turned into products used by everyone in everyday life
- Do you think MPEG is a good conduit for research?
Yes, absolutely and definitely!
- Can you comment on your MPEG experience?
Very positive because allowed myself to be educated with technical discipline and to grow competencies on technologies I didn’t have before in an open environment.
Negative because when industries leave may be we all together miss the opportunity to reconsider the technology under development as well as the problem that was addressed
- Are you happy with MPEG standards?
Depends on which ones in some cases yes definitely, in other cases no.
- Do you think MPEG standards are the right choice?
Depends on which ones in some cases yes, in other cases no. It depends on the problem it tries to solve and in which timeframe
- What do you expect from MPEG in the future?
Simplify processes, become more rapid, look ahead on breakthrough technologies (e.g. AI)
