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Go to a Mac store, click one of the links (using a mac) at http://www.windowsmedia.com/mediaguide/radio , see if it plays. Go to Microsoft.com/mac, try to get Windows Media Player for OS X on that Intel based mac, it will install perfect raping all your browsers and system stability because it runs in Rosetta.

WMV 9 is open because DVD Jon has cracked it big time, with a working demo back in 2004
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/26/ 0042252&from=rss

Anything produced in Quicktime can be watched via standards based media players via the configuration tipped at my "ranting" and "incomprehensible" post. If you want iTunes/DRM support, Apple will have to shut up the wmedia trolls first not to rant "DRM DRM"' on Slashdot.

Ranting is something like bitching about Xiph.org just because your mail didn't work which you sent from a DYNAMIC IP. (Checked your Journal)

While I am not a great fan of ogg (because of its fanatics), I respect/thank them for supporting OS X via legit,native way using quicktime codecs sparing their time.

Next time think twice before claiming anything coming from MSFT is "open", someone with "incomprehensible" english may ask you why Macromedia Flash 6+ (VPC 6) became de-facto standard for Web video. Because it works? Why did AVID Tech. choose Quicktime framework ignoring every kind of offer from MS? Because it is monopoly free? They don't want their products to be conspired by MSFT just because it runs perfectly on Macintosh?

Industry has chosen the standards already: H264, VP6 (codec in use via Flash) and MPEG-4 AVC along with Quicktime based container.

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Microsoft Office
3. PuTTy SSH Client
4. WinRAR (will check out Izarc too)
5. WinAMP
6. POPFile, an Email Filter
7. SmartFTP, gonna FileZilla a try though..
8. IrfanView, a free picture viewer
9. NetTransport download manager, also downloads media streams
10. Windows Media Player 9-- its actually pretty good!

Where did you go that you had problems finding it? I usually direct people here. If you lemme know where you were trying to get it from and couldn't find it, I can look into it further...

-Z (I do work for MS, but I'm speaking solely for myself as always)

While spending that much time to flame Realmedia, he/she could find a more apporiate codec for a TALK show. Wmedia 9, Real9/10 formats designed for music in mind.

The DRM works the same way for all of them. 40+ portable units from 6 manufacturers have somehow figured out how to make it work.

500+ devices support WMA, though I'd bet most don't work with DRM'd files.

http://windowsmedia.com/9series/Personalization/Co olDevices.asp?page=4&lookup=CoolDevices

As bad as people may hate Microsoft or Media Player, it does support multiple players and platforms - not just the iPod. A list is available at http://windowsmedia.com/9series/Personalization/Co olDevices.asp.

In Windows Media Player 9, go to:

"Tools" menu -> select "Options.." -> choose the "Copy Music" tab.

Uncheck the "Copy protect music" option (which is enabled by default). This is all about the jukebox feature that's designed to rip your CDs to the hard drive. Being Microsoft it defaults to making copy-protected files.

MP3 encoding is not included by default because of the same patent problems that have been plaguing Linux distributions, but there are plug-ins that you can buy.

Of course OGG Vorbis is the best option, but Apple's free iTunes for Windows will make MP3 files as will CDEx.

4.2 gigs? That's not nearly enough space. A single movie, stored in 1920x1080 @ 23 fps is around 8 gigs when compressed using Media Player 9's codec.

Even a 480p movie will take up 4.72 gigs for every 120 minutes, that's uncompressed tho.

I'm fine with the physical size of the media out now. I doubt a flash card costs less in materials than a DVD, since all a DVD consists of is a small plastic wafer and metallic film. That boils down to much, much less than a penny in materials. Then you've got that added benefit of people already having CD and DVD storage devices.

I'm a lot more concerned with what's considered acceptible quality right now. Movies need to be encoded at 1280x720 and 1920x1080 with the original audio data on the disc. Currently, anyone with a decent 36", or larger, display is stuck watching artifacts and seeing about 1/4 of the detail the original film was recorded in.

It's much like comparing a 128K mp3 to a CD Audio track. The effect isn't really noticed until it's experienced.

Microsoft, which I've hated for years, has managed to be the only ones being proactive at bringing decent quality movies to home theaters.

For a demonstration of this product, click here. Be warned, you need Windows and Media Player 9 to view the site. If you have these, then you can download some video demos in 720p and 1080p. Yeah, it's not much content, but I'm all ears if anyone's found a better demo with more actual products out.

Sorry about the long-winded response. One only has to browse back through my comment history to see how upset I am with the industry over HDTV issues. We can put a damn man on the moon, but we can't seem to get a system in place to have high-resolution video entertainment in our homes.

MS is going to start selling music players and has it's own distribution system that competes with the RIAA.

NBC is using Fox's success with a music program to bolster the relevance of TV (and thereby its own relevance).

Gotta love "news" from broadly diverse companies with vested interests. What next, the Philip Moris poll: Do kids prefer menthol or non-menthol? (great, because we offer both!)

*cough* Bullshit.. just try decoding any of these HD MPEG4 videos with a Duron 1GHz. Can you say less than 3fps?

P.S.: Those things that sound like commercials in the NPR broadcast can't be commercials, because public radio doesn't have commercials by definition. They must be "sponsorship acknowledgements."

I find it highly amusing that the only place I could find clips for this new movie was on WindowsMedia.com!

"Created using Linux, advertised by Microsoft."

If you guys were to look at this you might be willing to change your minds. For those of us with incredibly fast machines and Windows Media Player 9 you can view some 1080p clips!

I strongly recommend checking that site out. While I dislike Microsoft, I applaud them trying to make high quality video mainstream.

Now the question becomes are we willing to sell out to MS for these clips? The answer for most of the people on this board is probably no. The answer for the masses is probably sure, so it looks like we'll be stuck with this MS video standard down the line.

I get this message whenever I try to access A web page about MP3 vs. Winamp features from the Media player:

http://windowsmedia.com/9series/detection/NSPage.a sp:

We're sorry. This Windows Media 9 Series content is only available to be viewed using Internet Explorer.

Learn more about Internet Explorer.

So that I can play Windows Media files!!!

Creative is dancing to MS' jingle, so most likely it's loaded with DRM software. Perhaps it will be
featured together with their other products on the hall of shame.

'Free' Costello CD seeds DRM, MS Media Player 9 By John Lettice Posted: 09/22/2002 at 10:55 EST
Hardware supporting Microsoft's Secure Audio Path DRM technology seems to have arrived, albeit somewhat bashfully, and as if that wasn't enough, today the UK Sunday Times newspaper unleashed a neat little trojan that'll upgrade you to Windows Media Player 9, complete with all those lovely facilities to protect 'your' music. If you're not careful, that is.

To remind you, Secure Audio Path is a Digital Rights Management technology designed to interpose its body between encrypted digital music and the output device, thus stopping DMCA-breaching criminals diverting the stream to an unauthorised application. In order to work it needs compliant, authenticated output devices, and by a miraculous coincidence we've just been tipped off about one of the first cuckoos to go public - Creative Labs.

Microsoft itself publishes a helpful list of players, marking those including Windows Media DRM, but bear in mind the list is dated May, so there should be quite a few more around by now. In addition, it's not particularly easy to track which PC sound cards and audio systems are compliant, so let's hear it for Creative, which has quietly announced a couple of them in the readme files of its Soundblaster Live update software.

These state:

"Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a technology which enables the copyright owner of an intellectual property (for example, a digital audio file), to control how the listener uses the file.

"To protect against unauthorised duplication, Sound Blaster Audigy [or Sound Blaster Live!, in the other readme] shuts down its digital output when encrypted files are played back through a Microsoft DRM supported audio player (for example, Creative PlayCenter)."

Creative will of course by no means be the only company whose products do this, and we wouldn't be at all surprised if many of them didn't feel the need to inform you of the feature on the packaging, in the manual, in the licensing agreement or even in a readme several folders deep in the software. But one can pick up the odd clue. Here, for example, is one of Microsoft's lists of audio chip manufacturers supporting WMA format. Note the reference to Corona (WMP 9) and, way down at the bottom: "Windows Media offers the industry's only integrated digital rights management solution."

The hardware could get kind of tricky to avoid, but the file format itself is currently less so. Which makes today's Sunday Times exercise rather interesting. As far as we know this is the second such exercise performed via a ST freebie. We didn't pick up on the first (Oasis, sorry people), but we've had a good look at this one.

It consists of preview tracks from Elvis Costello's When I was Cruel - Collector's Edition, due out on Monday. There are some audio tracks, which are unprotected, a couple of unprotected WMAs and a couple of protected ones, which you're only supposed to be allowed to play four times. Wearing our best face-mask and lab coat, we investigated.

Linux finds the file system on the CD alien, and declines to mount it. You can cancel the autoplay and browse the CD under XP, then copy a protected track to the hard disk and try to open it with Ashampoo, which is a nice little player which also supports .ogg files, and which we just recently discovered. It starts out thinking it's a WMA file, but then reports an unsupported file format.

OK, so what happens if you let the CD autoplay? You get the Sunday Times opening screen, then clicking continue takes you to a screen listing the tracks, what you can do with them, together with entries for "how it works" and "test your PC." The salient points of the first are that you need:

"-Windows Media Player 7.1 or later, configured to automatically acquire licenses.
-A internet connection is necessary to acquire a license for the protected tracks."

The test routine merely checks if you qualify and points you in the right direction if you don't. Opening the files with WMP, by the way, takes you in pretty much the same direction. You get the following message:

"The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation.

"When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet. Click learn more to find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your privacy."

Unhappily, as Agnitum firewall was in the way we never did learn how Microsoft was protecting us. The page of recommended media players is however here. Note that the XP installation is running WMP 8, but that it still needs to have its DRM switched back on (which we presume would happen if we persisted) and to have the unique identifier issued. OK, try Windows 2000 with WMP 6 on it. On trying to play a file with this, you're advised that Media Player 7.1 or above is needed, and if you go ahead and click on upgrade, it takes you through to the Media Player 9 beta. At the bottom there's a link for all available versions, but even there you've got the beta listed first.

So, you've got a free preview of a couple of tracks, and you can listen to them each four times so long as you just follow the instructions. If you do, then you'll (most likely) end up with the beta of Microsoft's latest DRM player (which youn can't easily get off XP), and you'll also have your settings changed so that your installation facilitates DRM, WMA format and pay per play. But don't worry, it didn't cost you anything.*

* We were contacted by a reader a couple of weeks ago with a cautionary tale about players that protect your music. The reader was maybe a little careless, true, but it's easily done for people who never look in their settings, and who might not notice things getting switched on. Say you've recorded bought CDs using WMP, and you decide before upgrading to XP you'll do a clean install, so you back up your music files, vape the disk and then do the install. You did back up your licences as well, didn't you? Oh dear...

There's also a(n official) Solaris Windows Media player here (or so).

a) - You are right - IE still crashes my systems (in windows, of course...), but mozilla, when it crashes, leaves windows alone just fine...and it's laughable to watch me try and middle-click to open a new page in IE. I still curse that little move-thingy. arg. Mozilla is awesome for win, and in linux it's pretty good too.

b) - streaming audio - does it really matter? everyone I know who needs audio uses p2p. Internet radio is dying. what else is there? seriously, I just don't know, and i'm curious if there is anything.

c) - A friend of mine runs apache in win98. A lot of people use it. Wait until 2.0, or read this slashdot article if you don't believe me. I agree with the parent i'm replying to. MS hasn't done too much to impress me with their internet stuff. It's mostly bloated and insecure.

- dave

check out http://www.windowsmedia.com/mg/Games.asp.

Make sure you watch the preview for "Halo". It's SICK. Lots of Star Wars games too.

Oh yea you need Windows Media Player to watch these :)

Interesting commentary from macfixit.com on Microsoft's aggressiveness ever since the breakup remedy was thrown out:

In recent weeks, we have seen Microsoft remove its support for Netscape extensions, forcing Apple to scramble to revise its QuickTime plug-in so that it would work with the Windows version of Explorer (and making us wonder if this also had something to do with Microsoft's desire to push its own Media Player format). At the same time, it omitted Java support from Window's Explorer [see previous item]. Then there is XP's reduced support for the MP3 format (again in favor of Microsoft's own alternative), plus the countless ways XP coerces you to MS-approved web sites [see this item]. Add to all of this the recent controversy over MS blocking access to MSN by web browsers other than Explorer (see next item). We could go on. But you get the point. Yes, it certainly appears that Microsoft has been humbled by this lawsuit.

My take on the court case all along...

Microsoft's defense: "No, Your Honor, we're not responsible for murdering the victim! We only pointed the gun towards him and pulled the trigger -- it was his fault that he wasn't strong enough to deal with that! Besides, he was someday eventually going to die anyway! And there's no point in punishing us now, since he's already dead."

DOJ: "Yes, you're right, we're sorry. We're going to punish you by telling you never to do it again! Here's your gun back."

So if Media Player isn't included what replaces it?

Easy. WinAmp and/or RealPlayer. What about .ASF files you may ask?

Bag 'em or (at the least) still "allow" M$ to offer it as a free download.

Well, it's about time Netscape got with it and jumped on the dot com bandwagon. The whole "media hub" thing is a really cool new idea...I mean nobody's doing that.

MSN is featuring the trailer of the Tomb Raider movie on their Windows Media site (300k, 100k, 56k). There's alot of Matrix style action, but the special effects don't look like anything to write home about. Also, it appears no special effects were used make Angelina Jolie look more like Lara Croft. RealVideo version is available here, and the QuickTime version is available on Apple's website.

MSN is featuring the trailer of the Tomb Raider movie on their Windows Media site (300k, 100k, 56k). There's alot of Matrix style action, but the special effects don't look like anything to write home about. Also, it appears no special effects were used make Angelina Jolie look more like Lara Croft. RealVideo version is available here, and the QuickTime version is available on Apple's website.

MSN is featuring the trailer of the Tomb Raider movie on their Windows Media site (300k, 100k, 56k). There's alot of Matrix style action, but the special effects don't look like anything to write home about. Also, it appears no special effects were used make Angelina Jolie look more like Lara Croft. RealVideo version is available here, and the QuickTime version is available on Apple's website.

(Note: replace the references to Julie Andrews with your favorite artists if necessary.)

Suppose Julie Andrews is going to record a new album (she can sing a bit... just one second more...), and the record label is going to use SDMI to "secure" the music on CD. Suppose the only software that can read SDMI-secured CDs are for Windoze and Macs.

Suppose the online copies of the Julie Andrews album is released in Windows Media format rather than something useful like Vorbis.

Does that mean I'm shit out of luck if I'm using Linux and looking for "street legal" SDMI-compliant software (with the RIAA pulling the Intervideo defense to shut us up)?

Will the RIAA get MP5-armed agents to do a "shoot to kill" at the next Jon Johansen?

Will the SDMI ever be used in the first place to create "racism by reason of operating system?"

Trivia: Ms. Andrews' case against the doctor who wrecked her voice would have been handled by Lewis A. Kaplan if it weren't for the doctor's settlement.

Look at the money going into streaming media. A large segment of the business world still sees the internet as just another medium for TV or radio broadcasting. By it's very nature broadcasting is not interconnected, it's passive and linear.

Tim Berners-Lee wrote in his book, Weaving the Web that the main obstacle to the web being a true information web of shared knowledge is that content is controlled by too few. He was upset that browsers were developed which could not edit web pages like his original browser/editor.

The silver lining to this, IMHO, is the "weblog" phenomenon, including sites like Slashdot, where ordinary users can contribute their ideas, especially in html format so that they can contribute links. I really believe that some day soon the conventional media sites will be forced to give this kind of capability to their readers, or else risk losing all those eyeballs to Slash-like sites.

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."

No, it really wasn't a troll, although maybe I was a little harsh. I was just annoyed by the absolute arrogance of MP3 to not even ask how anyone else felt about them doing it. In a perfect world, my.mp3.com is an awesome idea. In the real world, though, it's so incredibly easy to get around its copyright protections that it's almost like having no protections. If they had approached some of the people whose music they'd be storing to work out a way to make it more pirate-proof, it would be hard to be nearly as annoyed at them.

I have absolutely no objection whatsoever to the service they run which allows bands to put their stuff up for free, and although I don't use it, I'm glad that there are places like mp3.com which are doing that.

Not trying to steer you away from mp3.com, but give some internet radio stations a try sometime -- I hate the local radio stations around here and get most of mine via the internet as well. Undergroundradio 3WK happens to be my current fave, with lots of great indie stuff, and is good if you have RealPlayer, although windowsmedia.com has loads of great internet radio stations if you own the Windows Media Player.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Microsoft is really pushing its format, specifically audio because of its superiority over MP3 and the fact that most audio is stored on expensive flash memory (yes, it's true -- a 64kbps WMA file sounds just as good as a 128kbps MP3). If you don't believe me, check out the Windows Media Site and look at the hardware section.