TABLE OF CONTENTS The beauty of MPEG-4 is that it is not only an extremely advanced and versatile technology, it also delivers new and exciting business opportunities.
Already at this point you may be thinking, technologists come up with more and more solutions to all our media problems by the hour. What's so special about MPEG-4? The answer lies in the simple fact that MPEG-4 is the multimedia standard that enables content to be created, delivered, and consumed in various qualities, for various devices, and is the only standard that gives you the opportunity to create interactive content. The other good news is that MPEG-4 is an international, open standard, which brings with it many advantages, as we saw earlier on. One major advantage, which plays an important role for business decision makers, is choice. To put it in simple terms, buyers are in charge. The many technology providers (i.e., the vendors that are offering their products) strive to deliver best-of-breed products to the marketplace, corresponding to their buyers' specifications and requirements. Flexibility, transparency, competitiveness, interoperability, and creation of larger markets are the key words surrounding this aspect of open standards.
With "non-standard," better known as proprietary, technologies or formats, buyers may have a choice of a variety of vendors, but the technology provider is ultimately always the same organization. Buyers run the risk of becoming dependent on the vendor and being captured in a monopolistic environment where many obstacles may need to be overcome over time. In other...
