I was puzzled why so many news sites were referring to Windows Media Video as Microsoft's implementation of VC-1. Then I looked on Microsoft's Silverlight website, which has a self-contradicting statement:
VC-1 is an industry-standard video format, recognized by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and most notably ships in all HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc–certified electronics, hardware, and tools. Windows Media Video 9 (WMV-9) is the Microsoft implementation of the SMPTE VC-1 standard video codec. Microsoft initiated development of the standard with the release of WMV-9 to SMPTE.
Then I looked on Wikipedia, and even their first paragraph contains a similar contradictory statement:
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard initially developed by Microsoft. WMV3, better known as Windows Media Video 9 codec, served as the basis for development of the VC-1 codec specification. On April 3, 2006, SMPTE announced the formal release of the VC-1 standard as SMPTE 421M. Its most popular implementation is Windows Media Video 9.
Wanting to make sure I wasn't in a parallel universe or something, I went on to Microsoft's WMV9 site... and there it is again!
The Simple and Main profiles have been complete for several years, and existing implementations such as WMV 9 have long supported the creation and playback of content using these profiles, as well as an early implementation of the Advanced profile.
...
Windows Media Video 9 is the Microsoft implementation of the VC-1 SMPTE standard. It supports Simple, Main, and Advanced profiles.
So, while it may be a relatively minor point of contention, in light of the whole Office Open XML debate, I think it's important that we be clear on where this stuff came from. I'm not saying that this was an intentional, coordinated effort on Microsoft's part to mislead people, even though my title might suggest otherwise (hey, I gotta get people to read it, right?) but if it was, it sure worked.
WMV9 is not Microsoft's implementation of VC-1. That would insinuate that VC-1 came first, which is not the case. WMV9 was submitted by Microsoft to the SMPTE as a standard, which 15 companies contributed to. This process was similar to the way Microsoft submitted OOXML as a standard. The result of that standardization process was given the name VC-1.
So WMV9 is not Microsoft's implementation of the standard, it's the codec from which the standard was based. Maybe I'm just being nitpicky and argumentative today, and maybe the industry is better-served if people don't see the MS stamp on the codec, but I think there is a difference.