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Apple Delays QuickTime 6

Concern about MPEG-4 licensing terms puts video product on hold.

Joris Evers, IDG News Service

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Apple Computer is delaying the release of its QuickTime 6 and QuickTime Broadcaster software because it doesn't agree with licensing terms for the MPEG-4 video technology used in the software, the company says.

MPEG-4 is a digital compression standard for multimedia developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group. Many companies hold patents on parts of the standard. They are represented on licensing matters by MPEG-LA.

MPEG-LA's proposal for license fees, released late in January, has stirred a debate.

Double Royalties?

The MPEG-4 Industry Forum, representing companies adopting the MPEG-4 standard, has asked for clarification of the terms. Its members are concerned about the practicality of the licensing scheme, according to a statement it released last week. Apple is an M4IF member.

Content providers will have to pay 2 cents per hour of streamed commercial MPEG-4 content and content stored on a packaged medium, such as a CD, according to the MPEG-4 licensing terms drafted by MPEG-LA. Companies that offer products with MPEG-4 encoders and decoders, such as Apple, have to pay 25 cents per encoder or decoder, up to a maximum of $1 million per year, according to the terms.

Apple agrees with paying a reasonable royalty for the use of MPEG-4 codecs in its software, but believes MPEG-4 can't be successful if content producers must also pay, the company said in a statement.

QuickTime 6, the next version of Apple's multimedia software, and QuickTime Broadcaster, new software that enables live broadcasting over the Internet, were shown Tuesday at an event in Los Angeles. Both include full support for MPEG-4, Apple said.

Needed for Projects

Clearly, MPEG-4 technology is important to Apple development. Just a day earlier, Apple announced it is joining with Ericsson, and Sun to develop a wireless platform based on QuickTime. The technology is intended for delivering multimedia content such as movie clips and news programs to wireless devices, and will be created using the MPEG-4 standard.

The three vendors say the platform, called the Ericsson Content Delivery Solution, will let developers send compliant content to a wide range of devices. Apple will be using its QuickTime software for content creation and encoding. Ericsson is focusing on wireless infrastructure, and Sun will be providing hardware and software for content delivery, the companies said.

They expect to release the hardware and software package to mobile phone network operators in the second half of this year.

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