MPEG-1 is the first video and audio lossy compression standard developed by the MPEG organization. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

The compression algorithm was defined in 1990.

At the end of 1992, MPEG-1 was officially approved as an international standard.

The MPEG-1 audio standard is divided into three layers: MPEG-1-Layer 1, MPEG-Layer 2, and MPEG-Layer 3.

MP3 stands for moving-picture-expertsgroup-audio-layeriii and was invented in 1991 by engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute, a research organization based in Erlangen, Germany.

MP3 is designed to drastically reduce the amount of audio data. Using MPEGaudioLayer3's technology, the music is compressed into smaller files at a compression ratio of 1:10 or even 1:12, and for most users, the sound quality of the replay is not significantly reduced compared to the original uncompressed audio.

Between 1992 and 1998, with no competitors emerging, the mp3 format developed rapidly on the Internet and became almost synonymous with online music.

In September 1998, the Fraunhofer Institute sent a letter to several MP3 software developers stating that a license was required to "distribute or sell encoders or decoders".

The letter claimed that the unauthorized product "infringes the patent rights of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and Thomson in France." To manufacture, sell, or distribute products that use the [MPEGLAYER-3] standard or our patents, you will need to obtain a license agreement from us for those patents. ”

These patent issues have dramatically slowed down unauthorized MP3 software development and led attention to the development and welcome of alternative alternatives.

After nearly 10 years of development, the shortcomings of MP3 audio format have gradually been exposed: first, the quality of music is destroyed too much for the sake of compression; Second, certificate encryption is not supported.

At the end of 1998, Dimeng released the RIOPMP300.

Different from the weak Shihan, Dimeng Multimedia is a consumer electronics giant involved in many fields in California, USA, with very strong strength in the fields of computer sound cards and graphics cards, and is considered to be an important force in promoting computer multimedia.

The RIOPMp300 released by Dimeng quickly gained market attention and was very popular with consumers, and the price of up to $190 did not seem to stop the enthusiasm of American consumers.

The music format supported by riopmp300 is mp3, and at this time, there are a lot of free mp3 resources on the Internet.

Soon it was discovered that RiopMP300 could download MP3 on the internet without spending a single penny.

However, while the abundant MP3 resources of the Internet have brought infinite surprises and fun, they have also brought new problems of copyright protection.

Imperial Alliance was soon targeted by the traditional record industry giant riaa (Recording Industry Association of America) and took the company to court on the grounds that the RIOPMP300 infringed intellectual property rights.

……

In February 1999, when China's winter holidays arrived, Chen Fan set foot on American soil and established Umbrella Puter Inc. in the United States.

Subsequently, Umbrella Computer (USA) released a USB flash drive and UMP music player (UmbrellaMusic?Player) - UMP-U100 at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, USA.

Limited by manufacturing technology, the UMP-U100 player is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, with a small monochrome reflective LCD screen on the front to display song information.

The UMP-U100 has 32M of storage space and is powered by a size 5 battery, which can provide 10 hours of battery life.

UMP Music Player does not support MP3 format, but uses UMP format, a music format developed by Umbrella itself.

The UMP encoding scheme is a set of more advanced encoding schemes purchased by Umbrella Company from Germany and improved on the basis of MPEG-1Layer 2.

Using more advanced psychoacoustic model, clear voice monitoring technology, and active noise reduction technology than MPEG-1, the Huffman (Huffman) coding used in compression is changed to obtain a larger compression ratio, and dynamic coding technology is used to increase the bit rate when the signal is complex, and reduce the bit rate when the signal is weak, so as to get satisfactory results and ensure a good compression rate.

UMP's file format design is also more advanced, using the "production and broadcasting separation" technology, that is, the UMP file format can be continuously improved in size and sound quality without affecting the existing encoder or player to play it.

The UMP format supports multi-channel, and has a sound quality performance that surpasses the MP3 format or even MPEG-1layer2 under the same compression ratio, and supports copyright protection.

The MP3 format was developed in the 80s, and now the technology is actually backward, but its market position is unshakable.

Although the UMP format is much more advanced than the MP3 format, the market prospect is bleak, and few people who visited the booth of the umbrella computer company are optimistic that the new format developed by this unheard company can replace the MP3 format, and even the attitude towards the UMP player is cold.

How to look at the Riopmp300 of the Imperial League, it is also more pleasing to the market than the UMP-U100.

At this time, there are many consumer electronics companies that are optimistic about the MP3 player market, but none of them will take the initiative to develop a new music format, which is not yet compatible with the MP3 format.

The UMP player was not favored, but the UDISK of the umbrella booth made the booth gain a lot of attention!

The USB interface was jointly proposed by Intel, Compaq, IBM, Microsoft and other companies at the end of 1994, and has developed a mature technology for several years.

Just last year, Microsoft released the Windows 98 system with a built-in USB universal driver, making USB interface devices look more promising.

In 1999, the lag in the development of mobile storage devices has been bothering people for a long time.

At present, the removable storage devices used in computers are still the mainstream of 1.44MB floppy drives, and some new storage devices have also appeared, such as zip, mo, recorders, external hard disks, and so on.

However, these devices have great drawbacks as removable memory: the floppy disks used by floppy drives are cheap, but the reliability is extremely poor, and the capacity is small and the speed is slow; Other new types of mobile memory are expensive, inconvenient to install and carry, the standards are not uniform, and they generally use serial-parallel ports and slow speeds.

At this time, the sudden udisk broke into people's sight from outside the blind spot of people's thoughts, so that everyone who saw udisk would have a sudden realization: it can be like this!

Udisk's technology does not have any technical difficulties,The MP3 player that has appeared removes the music-related functions,And then modify the controller slightly,It's basically a U disk,It's just that no one has thought of it。

And the advantages of the U disk, the IT practitioners who participated in the exhibition did not even need to be introduced by the umbrella company, and they could see it for themselves:

The number of erases is higher than that of zip and mo disks;

No installation required, support hot-swappable, integrated drive and memory, adapt to any computer with USB;

Higher capacity, smaller size, faster storage and reading speeds;

The cost is lower than that of ZIP, MO disk drives, and as the price of flash memory drops, it can even be lower than floppy drives.

The USB flash drive, which seems to be a perfect replacement for floppy drives, caused a huge sensation as soon as it appeared.

After learning that the umbrella computer had applied for a patent for a USB flash drive, the companies that asked about the licensing method of the USB flash drive of the umbrella computer were the carp that crossed the river -- the most eagerly of which was Toshiba, which holds the technology and patents for the manufacture of flash memory.

In the 90s, Intel abandoned the flash memory manufacturing business for cost and strategic reasons, focusing on the R&D and manufacturing of CPUs.

At this time, Samsung was still very weak, and the global flash memory manufacturing was basically controlled by Japanese companies, and Toshiba was the patent owner and largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory.

At this time, Toshiba was suffering from the fact that the market capacity of NAND flash memory was too small to promote, and the MP3 player that appeared in 98 had already made it overjoyed.

However, how can MP3 players compare with USB flash drives, which are expected to replace floppy drives?

Therefore, Toshiba is the company that is most enthusiastic about the U disk patent, and even the umbrella proposes to exchange the U disk patent with Toshiba's flash memory patent, and Toshiba Corporation said that it can be discussed.

On February 9th, the USB flash drive of Umbrella Company, together with the digital camera exhibited at the same time, won the 1999 CES Best Exhibiting Electronic Product Award.

European and American media, computer newspapers, magazines and even mainstream media have reported this "epoch-making product", and they have not hesitated to praise the USB flash drive, and some media have also introduced the ump music player exhibited at the same time by the umbrella computer.

All of a sudden, umbrella computers are hot in the IT industry in Europe and the United States.

At this time, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Imperials for intellectual property infringement.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a formal lawsuit in the United District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Imperial Alliance's RIOPMP300 business for deliberately and impenetrable encryption technology that prompted users to download a large amount of music on the Internet without compensation, infringing its intellectual copyright, and requested that Imperial Alliance be prohibited from selling RIOPMP300 in the United States and that it should be compensated $53.7 million.

The Imperial Alliance took a tough stance and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America, declaring that it could not oppose technological progress under the pretext of protecting intellectual property rights, and demanding that the Recording Industry Association of America pay attention to the positive significance of MP3 player technology in promoting the dissemination of audio-visual works through the Internet.

Originally, the lawsuit would have ended in a victory for the Imperial League.

At this time, the lawsuit had not yet been resolved, and it was making a lot of noise on the American Internet, with a lot of relevant reports on portals and mainstream media, and a large number of IT Internet companies tended to sympathize with the position of the Imperial League, and the Recording Industry Association of America gradually put itself in a very embarrassing position.

Compared with the popularity of this lawsuit, the appearance of USB flash drive has to be relegated to the bottom and become the second hottest topic on the American Internet at this time.

However, at this time, the umbrella computer company, which was receiving widespread attention, suddenly jumped out to accuse the company, saying that the choice of MP3, a music format that does not support copyright protection, lacked moral considerations and seriously infringed on the rights and interests of many music creators. Technological progress cannot be used as an excuse to infringe on others as a matter of course, and the Imperial League should reflect on its own mistakes!