I’m reading fluffy press releases today about how Sun is going to work towards developing an open video codec: Sun Tackles Video Codec. The article is short on substance which is generally what earns this article a spot the Multimedia PressWatch category of this blog. Something about an Open Media Stack (OMS), perhaps correlated somehow to Open Media Commons (not to be confused with Open Media Now!).
It’s hard to find anything about this initiative that’s not a rehashed press release. But this Sun blog seems to have the most authoritative information, abstract though it may be. They present a fascinating design approach: Rather than evaluate algorithmic techniques based on their performance, evaluate them based on their legal status.
Good luck to them. Here’s a Wiki page to track it.
Knowing their favourite implementation language, performance is no problem at all.
And looking at what they are doing, they might get something like MPEG-4 ASP in a few years.