JPEG 2000 / Compression Performance / Features (Score 1)

From having been involved in the Jpeg2000 work from the technical side of things, I feel safe in saying that claims of 200:1 compression is ...well... nice and everything in a specialized case. In reality, the compression results for what was finally adopted as Jpeg2000 Part 1 are only about 10-20% better than JPEG baseline for the same realitive quality level -- be it error numbers, etc -- on average. At high bit rates, there is relatively little that differentiates wavelet scemes from dct based schemes. Where wavelets show better quality is at high-compression ratios (even like the example given in the EETimes article) the reason there is that the wavelet transform operates on the whole image rather than individual blocks, like the 8x8 blocks in JPEG. Thus, you have more flexibility in the data you throw away -- better energy compaction, etc. Where JPEG 2000 was supposed to be useful, according to those in charge, was not in compression performance but features. It should be noted, in addition to having more features, Jpeg2000 is also more complex than JPEG. More memory is required as well as more computational complexity. It is a tradeoff, to gain features. Will it succeed? Who knows. I think that makes some sense...anyway...