MPEG-3 (the failed HDTV standard NOT mp3)

[mendaliv]

Hey all! I was cruising around Wikipedia recently and stumbled across a rather minimal article about a failed MPEG standard called MPEG-3, which was apparently supposed to implement HDTV until it was discovered that MPEG-2 could do this.

Anyhow, it piqued my curiosity... is there much out there that can be used in a Wikipedia article on MPEG-3? How far did development get? And when was the MPEG working on it? I figured I'd ask here since a lot of you really seem to know what you're doing with this stuff.

Here's the article in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-3

[LoRd_MuldeR]

AFAIK the MPEG stopped developing their "next generation" Video-Format, when they realized that the ITU-T was on a better way.
So they dropped their own format and in 2001 the Joint Video Team (JVT) was founded, which consists of the MPEG and the ITU-T.
The result of that partnership is the "H.264" (ITU-T name) aka "MPEG-4 AVC" (MPEG name) format.

Nowadays H.264/AVC has become the de facto standard for HD video. Also MEPG-2 is still used. MPEG-3 has never seen the light...

[2Bdecided]

IIRC The references to non existent MPEG-3 pre-date this though. It might be as sample as the number was allocated, but the project was never started because MPEG-2 worked well enough.

I think there may have been a time when people though MPEG-1 = 320x240 ish, MPEG-2 = 720x480 ish, and MPEG-3 = 1920x1080 ish - none of this was ever strictly true of course (MPEG-1 does 1920x1080p24 HD just fine!), but these were anticipated as target applications. It just turned out that MPEG-2 was good enough at the time.

I don't know whether they finally used "MPEG-4" for the next project because they don't re-allocate numbers, or because by then "MPEG-3" would have been hopelessly confused with "mp3" if they had used it.

Cheers,
David.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

There is enough confusion with "MPEG-4" (the standard), "MP4" (the container format), "MPEG-4, Part-2" (the video format implemented by DivX/Xvid) and "MPEG-4, Part-10" (aka "AVC" or "H.264").

[Inventive Software]

MPEG-3 would have been confused with MPEG-1 Layer III, aka MP3, so that was one of the big factors in it fading out.

[SynchronousArts]

You need to ask this question here: info@chiariglione.org.

Hopefully he will reply. IIRC the MPEG-3 standard was under consideration in the 1994-95 timeframe.

-SA

[MfA]

Don't let him hear you say H.264 though.