you do want MPEG2, you simply do not know it
All major companies developing cd recording software for the everyday domestic user are bundling VideoCD recording capabilities in them, be it Roxio both in Mac's Toast or Win's Easy CD Creator or be it Ahead in Win's Nero (do not know about Mac's NeroMax). Roxio even bundles a VCD compliant MPEG1 encoder to use in stuff like iMovie or the very QuickTime, because since VideoCD can be played on DVD players while recorder on 60 cent CDs, they feel the general consumer would be happy to have that.
MPEG2 would have EXACTLY the same use for the general user, since SuperVideoCD does exactly the same as VideoCD (plays on DVDs, records in CDs) but at an incredibly much higher quality with almost no impact on encoding time. SuperVideoCDs use MPEG2 of course. Your DVD player can play them, your Mac not though, until now at least (not at all in OS 9, and not wihtout 3rd party open sorced, fan-made=buggy free software). You could hardly notice the difference between a not so greatly mastered DVD and a SVCD. VideoCDs OTH look like a brand new VHS on a TV.
Pro user have already had MPEG2 encoding capabilities for long, either bundled in Final Cut pro or whatever other pro editing/compression soft.
Apple, then, is marketing the MPEG2 QuickTime component to the general users, not pro ones, the very same users that have at least a single time whatched a VideoCD with their Mac, or authored anything with iMovie or iDVD. This has nothing to do with piracy.
If you never cared for VideoCD, then, of course, you could not care less about SuperVideoCD.
So THAT's the target that so many people were wondering.
Now that its use is clear, the main question if that is worth any money. I completely agree on a not-free MPEG2 encoding software. Its very powerfull technology and at tandem with QuickTime or iMovie, a very intuitive one. But considering it is also a relatively old one now and it is widely free on other platforms be it in Mac OS X itself, through the X-only video player VideoLan (
www.videolan.org), or the SEVERAL free MPEG2 decoders for Windows (nothing for OS 9), I think a free MPEG2 decoding-only component for QuickTime, or if only SVCD playing capabilities bundled into the system's DVD player is a must, and has been a must for a long time, both in OS X as in OS 9.
That is arguable, of course.
There is another reason why you might want MPEG2 for. As you probably know by now, DVDs also use MPEG2, but since the DVD player in OS X does not use QuickTime to decode it, it is not capable to use the powerful and specific MPEG2 decoding hardware that has been coming with all Macintosh's graphics cards for a long time now (both is Ati's and Nvidia's models), and this way free the processor of such load. It is not that those cards's processors could be as good as the G4 at doing that, but that they excel far more at it than the G4 does. It is already there, and for free. What is the exact reason why not to choose this path is beyond my knowledge.
But graphic cards manufacturers will only make drivers that help the OS boost performance in this kinds of things through QuickTime, since that was the main use and philosophy behind QT: to provide a unified imaging system that all applications could be helped by, and thus if you accelerated QT, you accelerated any app using QT. You cannot expect them to make drivers helping this particular application now, and that different one then, and that other completely different one then, that's crazy.
Up until the existence of this new MPEG2 QuickTime component which Apple sells, even my iMac G4 700, while capable of playing a DVD almost perfectly, will still show small but still annoying interlacing at fast motion scenes, even if the DVD movie has full frames encoded in it (that is called progressive video, opposed to interlaced video where only alternative half frames are shown in the display, as were on the VHS era). That means the processor just cannot handle it 100%, just 95%. That would be OK, unless I knew there is a phantastic piece of hardware sitting beside the G4 starving for MPEG2 to decode. My iMac suffers from it, I said, as well as my brother's iMac DV 400 which suffers even more (more than with OS 9, since the rest of the interface asked for les to the processor).
I do not know if this new MPEG2 codec features hardware acceleration, but probably it does not accelerate DVD playback since the software DVD player does not use QuickTime to play content. What I am sure of, and I honestly doubt anyone will disagree on (maybe I'm wrong) is that if Apple sold me a hardware DVD unit, with a powerfull graphic card, its price should have included hardware accelerated (through the graphic card) DVD playback software.
