I’ve done quite a bit of research on MPEG4-AVC / h.264 over the last year, but one thing that always seemed to bug me was that I couldn’t seem to find a freely available version of the spec anywhere. I’d hoped to find something on the ISO site, and I did, but it they’re charging for the pdf. Now in my book paying cash to read a spec stinks, seems contrary to the purpose of a standard and, well, just isn’t something I’m going to do, so I just slid by soaking up crumbs where I could find them.
To be fair there’s little chance I’ll actually understand the spec, so crumbs are probably appropriate. Reading level aside, I thought I was SOL until stumbling onto a link to the spec at the ITU-T site. For those who aren’t aware the MPEG4-AVC (ISO) / h.264 (ITU-T) spec was jointly developed by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group. The result is the exact same spec with different names (MPEG4 Part 10 / AVC vs. h.264) and, it turns out, completely different policies on whether to charge for the spec.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, I can get back to blankly staring at the spec until sleep or ADD overwhelms me.
One Comment
I was using Presto PVR software with my USB2.0 DVB-T device for a few months, but suddenly it no longer works, because my country (South Africa) is now broadcasting in a format (H264) that the software doesn’t understand. Could you please advise where I could download some other software that would work with my hardware. Thanks!