What's so great about MPEG-4?

It delivers video quality as good as MPEG-2 at about one-third less the bit rate. But then you can crank down the bit rate for lower bandwidth connections and it scales down beautifully. So you can deliver incredible streaming video with MPEG-4. It has got higher quality than anything out there--including Microsoft's upcoming Corona--and it's totally scalable. Everybody's jumping on this bandwagon. We've announced we're going to switch over to MPEG-4. Real has said they're going to. All the cell phone companies are going to be using it; it is the standard for third-generation cell phone video streaming. It also features AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio, which is the best audio around. It blows away MP3 (and) Windows Media. And it also is the audio format adopted by all satellite radio (companies). So this is gathering a tremendous amount of steam, and I think everybody is going to be cutting over to MPEG-4, with the possible exception of Microsoft, which is going to try and push its Corona technology that comes out later this year. They haven't gone into a preview or beta mode yet, but they said they were going to release it sometime this year.

How important do you think MPEG-4 will be to opening the barriers that block digital media?

I think it's going to be exactly like what MPEG-2 did. It's going to create whole new industries, because it's going to create a world standard. MPEG-2 created the whole DVD industry. I think MPEG-4 is going to be really big. QuickTime 6 is the first real implementation of MPEG-4 to be released. Not only is it a client, but with QuickTime Streaming Server and QuickTime Broadcaster, which allows real-time broadcasting of MPEG-4, we're providing an end-to-end solution for MPEG-4. And of course, it's compatible with all MPEG-4-compliant players.