| > thought I made clear, MPEG-1/2 were unsuitable for streaming on consumer hardware of the era. The lowest practical bitrates for either was far higher than common dial-up rates. Neither spec supported Sub-QCIF frame sizes or frame rates below 15fps. You did make it clear, you're just 100% incorrect. You can encode MPEG-1 video with any resolution and any bitrate you choose, just like MPEG-4 ASP. It is entirely within spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#Resolution/bitrate > MPEG-4 Part 2 was an evolution of the h.263 spec Not really. MPEG-4 ASP has much more in common with MPEG-2. MPEG-4 ASP for example omitted the in-loop deblocking in h.263, which reappeared in AVC/H.264. > audio was a problem as the specs wanted to use MPEG audio which likewise did not have super low bitrate modes. This is entirely wrong again. The MPEG-2 standard had defined audio modes down to 8kbits and 16000Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1#MPEG-2_audio_extensions > No one decided to develop h.263 and MPEG-4 just for funsies h.263 was developed for very low latency encoding to support real-time video conferencing better than MPEG-1/2. MPEG-4 SP was an attempt to develop a patent royalty-free codec, which MPEG-1/2 were not (they are, now). MPEG-4 part-2 video does offer some small improvements in quality over MPEG-1/2 (qpel, 4mv), but nothing dramatic. That was saved for AVC, which is of course a significant improvement over MPEG-1/2 at low bitrates. |