Introduction

If I exchange words with taxi drivers in a city somewhere in the world, one of the questions I am usually asked is: “where are you from?”. As I do not like straight answers, I usually ask back “where do you think I am from?” It usually takes time before the driver gets the information he asked for. Then the next question is: “what is your job?”. Again, instead of giving a straight answer, I ask the question: “do you know MPEG?” Well, believe it or not, 9 out of 10 times the answer is “yes”, often supplemented by an explanation decently connected with what MPEG is.

Wow! Do we need a more convincing proof that MPEG has conquered the minds of the people of the world?

The interesting side of the story, though, is that, even if the name MPEG is known by billions of people, it is not a trademark. Officially, the word MPEG does not even exist. When talking to ISO you should say “ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11” (next time, ask your taxi driver if they know this letter soup). The last insult is that the mpeg.org domain is owned by somebody who just keeps it without using it.

Should all this be of concern? Maybe for some, but not for MPEG. What I have just talked about is just one aspect of what MPEG has always been. Do you think that MPEG was the result of high-level committees made of luminaries advising governments to take action on the future of media? You are going to be disappointed. MPEG was born haphazardly (read here, if you want to know how). Its strength is that it has been driven by the idea that the epochal transition from analogue to digital should not become another PAL-SECAM-NTSC or VHS-Betamax trap and that the format of digital media did not have to be different industry-by-industry.

In 30 years MPEG has grown 20-fold, changed the way companies do business with media, made music liquid, multiplied the size of TV screens, brought media where there were stamp-size displays, made internet the primary delivery for media content, created new experiences, shown that its technologies can successfully be applied beyond media…

MPEG-1 & MPEG-2

MPEG was the first standards group that brought digital media to the masses. In the 2^nd half of the 1990’s the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards were converted to products and services as the list below will show (not that the use of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 is confined to the 1990’s).

• Digital Audio Broadcasting: in 1995, just 3 years after MPEG-1 was approved, DAB services began to appear in Europe with DAB receivers becoming available some time later.
• Portable music: in 1997, 5 years after MPEG-1 was approved, Saehan Information Systems launched MPMan, probably the first portable digital audio player for the mass market that used MP3. This was followed by a long list of competing players until the mobile handset largely took over that function.
• Video CD: in the second half of the 1990’s Video CD (VCD) spread especially in South East Asia until the MPEG-2 based DVD, with its superior quality, slowly replaced it. VCD uses all 3 parts of MPEG-1 (layer 2 for audio).
• Digital Satellite broadcasting: in June 1994 DirecTV launched its satellite TV broadcasting service for the US market, even before MPEG released the MPEG-2 standard in November of that year! It used MPEG-2 and its lead was followed by many other regions who gradually converted their analogue broadcast services to digital (and the process has not be complete globally even now!).
• Digital Cable distribution: in 1992 John Malone launched the “500-channel” vision for future cable services and MPEG gave the cable industry the means to make that vision real.
• Digital Terrestrial broadcasting:

o    In 1996 the USA Federal Communications Commission adopted the ATSC A/53 stan­dard. It took some time, however, before achieving wide coverage of the country, and for other countries following the ATSC standard.

o    In 1998 the UK introduced Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).

o    In 2003 Japan started DTT services using MPEG-2 AAC for audio in addition to MPEG-2 Video and TS.

o    DTT is not deployed in all countries yet, and there are regularly news of a country switching to digital, the MPEG way of course.

• Digital Versatile Disc (DVD): toward the end of the 1990’s the first DVD players were put to market. They used MPEG-2 Program Stream (part 1 of MPEG-2) and MPEG-2 Video, and a host of audio formats, some from MPEG.

 MPEG-4

In the 1990s the Consumer Electronics industry provided devices to the broadcasting and telecom industries. and devices for package media. The shift to digital services called for the IT industry to join as providers of big servers for broadcasting and interactive services (even though in the 1990’s the latter did not take off). The separate case of portable audio players provided by startups did not fit the established categories, neither did the initiation of the consumer device business by Apple which shed “computer” from its name.

MPEG-4 played the fundamental role of bringing the IT industry under the folds of MPEG as a primary player in the media space.

• Internet-based audio services: The great original insight of Steve Jobs and other industry leaders transformed Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) from a promising technology to a standard that dominates mobile devices and internet services
• Internet video: MPEG-4 Visual, with the MP4 nickname, did not become “MP3 for video”. Still it was the first example of digital media on the internet as DivX (a company name). Its hopes to become the streaming video format for the internet were dashed by MPEG-4 Visual licensing terms, the first example of ill-influence of technology rights on an MPEG standard
• Video for all: MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) became a truly universal standard adopted in all areas and countries. Broadcasting, internet distribution, package media (Blu-ray) and more.
• Media files: the MP4 File Format is the general structure for time-based media files, that has become another ubiquitous standard at the basis of modern digital media.
• Advanced text and graphics: the Open Font Format (OFF), based on the OpenType specification, revised and extended by MPEG, is universally used.

 MPEG-7

• Media production and archiving metadata: are satisfied by the MPEG-7 Audio Visual Description Profile (AVDP), developed with participation of the broadcasting industry.

MPEG-A

• Format for encrypted, adaptable multimedia presentation: is provided by the Common Media Application Format (CMAF), a format optimised for large scale delivery of protected media with a variety of adaptive streaming, broadcast, download, and storage delivery methods including DASH and MMT.
• Interoperable image format: the Multi-Image Application Format (MIAF) enables precise interoperability points for creating, reading, parsing, and decoding images embedded in HEIF.

 MPEG-B

• Generic binary format for XML: is provided by Binary format for XML (BiM), a standard used by products and services designed to work according to ARIB and DVB specifications.
• Common encryption for files and streams: is provided by Common Encryption (CENC) defined in two MPEG-B standards – Part 7 for MP4 Files and Parts 9 for MPEG-2 Transport Stream. CENC is widely used for the delivery of video to billions of devices capable to access internet-delivered stored files, MPEG-2 Transport Stream and live adaptive streaming.

 MPEG-H

• IP-based television: MPEG Media Transport (MMT) is the “transport layer” of IP-based television. MMT assumes that delivery is achieved by an IP network with in-network intel­ligent caches close to receiving entities that adaptively packetise and push the content to rec­eiving entities. MMT has been adopted by the ATSC 3.0 standard and is currently being dep­loyed in countries adopting ATSC standards and also used in low-delay streaming applications.
• More video compression, siempre!: has been provided by High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), the AVC successor yielding an improved compression up to 60% compared to AVC. Natively, HEVC supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wider Colour Gamut (WCG). However, its use is plagued by a confused licensing landscape
• Not the ultimate audio experience, but close: MPEG-H 3D Audio is a comprehensive audio compression standard capable of providing very satisfactory immersive audio experiences in broadcast and interactive applications. It is part of the ATSC 3.0 standard.
• Comprehensive image file format: High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) is a file format for individual HEVC-encoded images and sequences of images. It is a container capable of storing HEVC intra-images and constrained HEVC inter-images, together with other data such as audio in a way that is compatible with the MP4 File Format. HEIF is widely used and supported by major OSs and image editing software.

 MPEG-DASH

Streaming on the unreliable internet: Dynamic Adapting Streaming on HTTP (DASH) is the widely used standard that enables a media client connected to a media server via the internet to obtain instant-by-instant the version, among those available on the server, that best suites the momentary network conditions.

Conclusions

Figure 14 intends to attach some concreteness to the ideas illustrated above by showing some of the most successful MPEG standards issued from 31 years of MPEG activity.

Figure 14: Some successful MPEG standards

An entity at the lowest layer of the ISO hierarchy has masterminded the transition of media from the analogue to the digital world. Its standards underpin the evolution of digital media, foster the creation of new industries and offer unrelenting growth to old and new industries worth in excess of 1 trillion USD per year, as will be shown in the next chapter.