Wikibooks:Sandbox

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1.Moving Images (video-conferencing)—compression/decompression standards will be issued this year, and most businesses endorse this standard. 2.Moving Images (compression/decompression for digital storage)—a de facto standard has been established in several major systems. 3.However, an international standards group is working on a different standard. 4.Such premature commitments can lead to further delays in standardization as industries take sides and defend their positions in the standards debate. 5.Standards have been an issue since the inception of electronic communications, and the growth of the capability of the personal computer has shown what happens when technology precedes standards in the market place. 6.But never before has the necessity for standards been so obvious as it is with the emergence of multimedia technology. 7.To date, progress toward developing these new standards has been encouraging but slow. 8.What follows then is often de facto standards established by the company with the first product on the market, or competing standards if several large companies have simultaneously committed to different approaches. 9.To get an idea of the complexity of this issue, consider the latest status of some of the standards that will affect the multimedia market: 10.Still Images (compression, decompression of high-resolution, color images)—a draft standard has been issued, which has almost universal support. 11.And, because technology waits for no one, or no standard, companies eager to market their multimedia products are committing themselves before standards have been reached. 12.Audio—a de facto standard created by Sony, and most other companies are expected to follow. 13.Animation (standard formats)—no standardization movement in this area, and a de facto standard seems likely. 14.Compound Documents (multimedia interacting with other objects)—two architectures are being proposed, and a single standard seems unlikely. 15.Being able to quickly manipulate and store multimedia data will be of little value if the only system that can use the data is the one that created it.