An industry standards group has made a preliminary decision to include Microsoft’s video compression technology in a next-generation DVD format, giving the company a key boost in the digital media arena.
The steering committee for the DVD Forum on Friday announced provisional approval for Microsoft’s VC-9 and two other video technologies–H.264 and MPEG-2–as mandatory for the HD-DVD video specification for playback devices. VC-9 is the reference title for the underlying video decoding technology within Windows Media Video 9. The approval is subject to several conditions, including an update in 60 days of licensing terms and conditions.
The DVD Forum Steering Committee also approved a near-final version of the HD-DVD specifications for rewritable discs.
The provisional decision “ends months of speculation over whether Microsoft would be endorsed or not,” said Richard Doherty, the president of Envisioneering Group, a media consultancy. “It’s a good tailwind for Microsoft.”
A standards win on DVDs would dramatically buoy Microsoft’s ambitions to take its multimedia technology beyond the Internet. It also could give the Redmond, Wash., giant substantial credibility when it shops its codec to partners outside of the PC business.
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