Microsoft Plans Media Player for Linux?

theancient1 writes "According to this article, Microsoft is considering releasing a Linux version of Windows Media Player. 'Paul Boudreau, Microsoft's programme manager for music and entertainment, said at a briefing on the software giant's plans for digital media: We see a need for Unix players and are working in that direction, including Linux.' Of course, a little quote is quite a bit different from actually seeing a product, but it's still not exactly expected."

Comments

Karma Killer!

[*borktheork*]

This is going to be a really predictable thread.. Yadayadayada, it won't be open source, yadayadayada. Assimilation. Blablabla.

Just see if I'm wrong.

I hope you all realize this isn't a bad thing.

[BilldaCat]

(insert random comment of getting moderated down for not bashing MS)

I'll take any media players I can get for Linux.. I don't really care who's writing it, I think it's important that if Windows Media Player does gain enough share over Real, that there is a way to still play media on Linux.

Re:I hope you all realize this isn't a bad thing.

[Nodatadj]

Well, so long as it actually works, and isn't just a token gesture, that someone on the WM team decided to do over their lunch break, and just so long as it doesn't try to do anything funny, like send MS a list of all my files, or what I'm reading etc...

Vaporware

[jTurbo]

This is the old vaporware trick all over again. M$ are affraid a good OSS video viewer will emerge on Linux. Thus they announce an upcoming version of the MediaPlayer so no one will bother to write/perfect an OSS version.

All mistakes in spelling and grammar are licensed under the GPL.

Re:Vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually we'll have; Windows for Unix

Would that be so bad? A Microsoft certified Windows(TM) environment which could sit on top of any *nix, and would behave (to the user) like Windows(TM) on a desktop.

I'm not saying I'd want to use it (actually, I might, when forced to write in Word or wanting to play a game not yet available elsewhere), but think of the millions who would use it and suddenly be comfortable in *nix. They might just try *nix without the Windows(TM) environment once in a while ... where might that lead?

Yes, I know, "use WINE", "use VMWare", etc ... they 1) aren't completely there yet and 2) don't have the Microsoft certification which means something to a large group of people.

Microsoft competing with themselves.

[Leigh13]

To quote the article:

However, Boudreau said that the Apple Macintosh was more important today because it is used for "relevant content creation", and he confirmed that Media Player for the Mac would have digital rights management (DRM) software built-in.

Microsoft has never really acknowleged any competition from Apple--after all, there isn't much of a server market for Macs. Therefore, it doesn't seem too surprising that they might port a software product over to the Mac platform.

However, Microsoft has admitted Linux to be a major competitor and cause of concern. Can we really expect them to begin porting softare to run under *nix?

This is beginning to look similar to AT&T before they were split up. As Bell Labs was making lots of money selling circuits to MCI and Sprint, the long distance division was struggling to come up with new ways to squash those other companies. It shouldn't be long before Microsoft is doing the same--developing software for Linux, while simultaneously trying to keep the OS from taking over their precious NT Server market.

Personally, I am very interested to see where this leads.

Re:Microsoft competing with themselves.

[Jon Peterson]

"Any Mac users in /. care to comment on the strengths of audio creation/manipulation on the Mac?"

Not a user but used to work in a Mac shop. Yes, they lead the field in low-medium end digital video, most 2D image manipulation, digital photography, compositing, DTP, and typesetting.

Partly this is cultural, partly technological, partly software support.

What's interesting to me is how well entrenched this is. The fact that Photoshop on a PC is nigh identical to Photoshop on a Mac will not make anyone switch, despite the obvious advantage of integrating with all the other PC users in the company. There are good reasons for this - graphic designers use their computers more intensely than almost anyone - certainly as much as hardcore programmers. They should be given the tools they prefer, and I.T. should deal with it.

As a non-Mac person who had to design an IT strategy around them, I know (a bit) about what I'm talking about.

Trojan Horse?

[Sarin]

Remember the story about the Trojan horse?

"install media player as root" then the program totally messes up the system, for "optimalisation" purposes.. next thing you know your system is as buggy as a smartupdated version of win98.

Guess who will be the big winner?...

Cool initiave though.. :)


Regards,

In other words, don't you write a media player

[heroine]

Seems like they're getting paranoid about Linux just like they did in 1997. Release another alpha of Microsoft Netshow to scare off the competition. Then abandon it for 3 years until someone starts threatening to release a competing product again. Don't see anyone threatening to release a competing product now however.

Re:In other words, don't you write a media player

[Cid Highwind]

Oh please, as though Real is any better. Right now there are two standards in streaming media. Real and MS. Real has given us old versions (5.x) (thanks, but every decent site requires G2 these days), and one very buggy very, very alpha version of G2. What updates have they made to their Linux G2 player? none!!

If MS releases player, then Real will have competition. If they want Linux market-share, they'll have to do a little better than one bug-riddled alpha release. Then MS will have to raise it's standards, and in a few iterations we'll have the same or better quality players as the windows/mac crowd.

Either that, or this is a vaporware announcement, they'll never make a release, and Real will go back to pretending Linux doesn't exist. In other words, we'll be back to where we are now.

Let's try out a few theories.

[matthew.thompson]

Of course it's perfectly possible that there are multiple reasons behind this

• Microsoft are chasing the right market
  The market for streaming media - despite what people say - is not currently the workplace since many offices dont allow audio and lets face it video without audio is a little lame. The home market - where there is a burgeoning number of Linux installations - is where the money is going to be in delivering digital media content and Microsoft has a large and growing stake in content providers.
• Microsoft are playing the press card
  Not all of the press is going to be sceptical about this and will happily swallow everything Microsoft gives to them - including the spiel of "We're supporting other operating systems" and "Linux is a true competitor otherwise we wouldn't be supporting it"
• Microsoft are trying to stave off court actions by supporting (in a loose sense) the open source arenaNo they're not going to release this as open source but I fully expect to see some reference to the Microsoft Nix Media Player miced in with words such as "Support" and "the" and "open" and "source" and "movement" to try and bluff their way out of having to actually open source things

Sceptic - yes. Happy - sorta, this is needed - especially is web media providers do start to ditch Real for the Microsoft offerings - and who can blame them all the Microsoft stuff is free while Real expect licences for streams. Waiting to see the flames brought on by this - God yeah. ;o)

Your kind of right ...

[divec]

Nobody will switch OS just so they can watch certain video clips.
However, many people might *not* switch OS because it would *stop* them from watching video clips.
The lack of good linux videoclip support won't repel current linux users, but it might stop current windows users from becoming linux users.

Then again, I'm not sure that WMP will have a positive overall effect on the linux video playback capability, in the long term. It may squash some good offerings that are just getting started now. It might be manipulated by MS to ensure that Linux is not *quite* as good as Windows for video playback (you might decide to write a video player if the current situation is dire, but you probably won't bother if the current situation is merely tolerable).

Not surprised at this

[RayChuang]

I'm not surprised that Microsoft is considering writing a version of the Windows Media Player that works under Linux.

Remember, you can get a lot more information on the .ASF/.ASX format used by Windows Media Player than the .RM/.RAM format used by Real Networks. I won't be surprised at all if Microsoft makes both a server program and client program for Windows Media Player in Linux under GNU General Public License guidelines, a move that could be extremely bad news for Real Networks since Real doesn't seem to be very inclined to write a Linux version of their streaming media server and client software.

Media players - Plugger

[gothic]

I'm not sure if many of you tried using the Netscape plugin called 'Plugger' ...It's pretty fancy, and you can find it on Netscape's plugin page. I can pretty much stream all my movie files/avi file/etc/etc with it, and it doesn't require too many programs to be installed. Here is a copy of the mime types:

audio/x-mpegurl
audio/mpegurl
audio/x-mpeg-url
audio/mpeg-url
image/x-sun-raster
image/sun-raster
image/x-png
image/png
image/x-tiff
image/tiff
audio/x-wav
audio/wav
audio/x-basic
audio/basic
audio/x-psid
audio/psid
audio/x-mpeg
audio/mpeg
audio/x-mpeg3
audio/mpeg3
audio/x-mpeg2
audio/mpeg2
audio/x-mod
audio/mod
audio/x-midi
audio/midi
video/x-fli
video/fli
video/x-msvideo
video/msvideo
video/x-anim
video/anim
video/x-sgi-movie
video/sgi-movie
video/x-dl
video/dl
video/x-quicktime
video/quicktime
video/x-mpeg
video/mpeg


Whoa, big paste.. =] It uses programs like xanim, and another free one, that I can't rememeber the name for now. I recommend checking it out. The readme from the program is pretty good too, and will tell you what you need to do, and download.

Could be a kiss of death...

[Renaud]

1) MS wants domination in the streaming media market
2) Non-windows users have no other choice than Real, and that keeps Real alive and prevents MS from reaching 1)
3) MS decides to release WM player for alternative platforms and to start aggressive partnership with content providers
4) Real dies, WM becomes the new standard
5) MS starts delaying non-windows versions of WM player, and eventually cancels them.
6) "Linux for multimedia ? nahhh, you can't even play streaming movies from the internet"

I wonder if they'll be able to get away with it after the DOJ trial, though...

What we really need here is an open standard (IETF, where are you ?), possibly based on a new technology (wavelets/fractal, whatever works best) so that it gains wide acceptance.

If content providers and MS get to decide the specs of future audio and video formats, prepare for SDMI-type crap...

What MS are up to - Pretty obvious really

[mattjp]

If you read the article you'll notice that MS are talking about:

"[H]e confirmed that Media Player for the Mac would have digital rights management (DRM) software built-in.
Within the next six to nine months, Microsoft plans to roll out a version of DRM that will enable consumers to manipulate and back up their own licence stores of video and music clips... [T]he software giant has yet to decide whether users will do this themselves or whether it will be kept on a secure site."

The media companies need this sort of functionality to go on existing - as the DVD debacle has shown, no amount of security features will have long term viability. What will therefore be required is a method by which consumers can demonstrate ownership of a license to posess music. MS wants to control the means by which this license is stored and validated.

This might not be the eventual standard but MS being MS, they'll want to get their foot in the door early. To control the standard they'll need to have their SW on as many platforms as possible - otherwise there would be Linux specific licensing authorities.


---No Judgement Just an Assesment---

----------Probably Wrong------------

Re:Could that be?

[jilles]

It's not about the client side they worry but about the serverside. Right now using windows media to stream audio and video means excluding non windows and non apple platforms. With a growing marketshare for these windows media incompatible platform that means that content providers are excluding a growing group of people.

So in order to compete on the serverside, microsoft needs to make sure that the potential audience for the content is as large as possible. The content providing market is going to be huge and MS simply cannot afford to miss that boat just to protect their OS.

So releasing a linux client seems like a good idea. Of course MS has suffered from sigthedness before so there's a difference between anouncing a thing like this and actually delivering a usable product. But if they are serious about becoming a major player on the content providing market (which I think they are) they will have to make sure that their content works everywhere, even on Linux.

Re:Saving their a$$es

[SoftwareJanitor]

If they are going to be the dominant force in streaming media, they need to support all platforms.

Temporarily. Once they crush all of the other streaming media formats, then they can drop support for all other platforms than their own and maybe the Mac, if there is something they need to coerce Apple to do. Once that is done, they can make some small "upgrades" that break backwards compatibility, and convince everyone only to support their new format. Then every other platform is locked out of streaming media.

It is for this reason that I'd prefer to support RealPlayer, and like to see Apple release a QuickTime for Linux and other platforms. Real doesn't really have a reason to cut other platforms off, and Apple probably will never make the Mac a dominant enough platform that they could afford not to support other platforms.

Not an announcement at all - I was there...

[ignatz]

It wasn't an announcement. I was at the press conference, and this was a response to a lot of very hard questioning on the direction of MS's audio tools.

The important (IMHO) thing was not the discussion of a Unix ASF player, but the fact that Microsoft were willing to discuss the licensing of the WMA codecs.

S.

Yes, it's for real ALREADY, and here's a link.

[brad.hill]

I wish I had some moderator points. It was called Netshow. I've used (and since uninstalled) it too. I can't believe that the top scored post in this discussion is a vaporware claim. Admittedly, it looks like they've since pulled it from their site, but check out this Techweb article from 1998.

Re:Yes, it's for real ALREADY, and here's a link.

[ottffssent]

Actually, contrary to what the article says, there is no such product. I'm not saying you're lying (or even that techweb is lying), since it's such an old article. Anyway, the only link on the page to the player goes to www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/download/uni x.html which appears innocent enough, except that that bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/downl oad/default.asp which in turn bounces to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/en/do wnload/Win32Otherx86.asp (just like you'd expect from microsoft...). THAT page has a link for 'other operating systems' since it takes you to a windows-only download page (again, figures, especially since the original link was for unix!!)

The 'other operating systems' page lists versions for NT4, 98, 95, win3.x (As if any machine running win3.x would play anything but mono sound anyway...). Way at the bottom, there's a player for the mac. (version 6.3, not 6.4 like the rest of them). *NOWHERE* is there a linux version.

Re:isn't it a bad thing?

[technos]

1. Were Microsoft not to release a WMP for Linux, we'd reverse engineer one in a three month span of time that didn't support their nifty 'copyright protections'.
2. Even if Microsoft releases one, many programmers/users will be unhappy with it and clone a better application that plays the same files, albeit in a longer length of time.
3. Microsoft is looking to displace Real; Real is an easy target, with the insane pricing scheme and all. They've [ms] shown themselves unable to deal with the surge of Linux popularity, so they're going to treat us indifferently, much like Apple.
4. Once we have a client, the server is a stones throw. If MS qoesn't release one open source, one will appear.

Look at ICQ for example. ICQ became popular with Win9x users, ICQ waits on a Unix client. Lots of people, who couldn't live with out it, began to r/e ICQ and clone it. Voila! ICQ releases a Java based client Unixy folks can use. But we don't like it; it hogs memory, crashes, etc. We go back to our clones, and along the way someone writes a bit of OSS server code, someone else writes a proxy, another writes an email-forwarder. It took us a little over a year from ICQ beta release to an functionally superior *nix clone. If there hadn't been that damn AIM distraction, we could have done it in far less. You don't need to worry about being 'left out in the cold'. Nobody ever gives us (the OSS community) a bone, and we've done just fine.

Anybody remember the Linux Media Player MS site?

[Wakko Warner]

Jeez, everybody knew that Media Player would be out "in a couple of months" back when Microsoft said it would in JUNE OF 1998!!!!

(We should believe them now?)

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

XMMS kicks butt

[SurfsUp]

As a result of the last /. article on the need for streaming media I (1) checked out icecast (1b) compiled it from source (2) tried out XMMS's streaming mp3 feature (2b) compiled it from source (3) spent a couple of hours listening to broadcast audio from greenwitch (4) figured out how to make netscape start the webcast automatically, just by clicking on the .mpu link.

The XMMS streaming audio is solid as a rock. Even without using the realtime priority feature, I couldn't get it to skip. (I guess I could if I tried *really* hard) The audio quality is superb - considering the bit rate and the miniscule speakers on my laptop. Gosh, that equalizer helps, and they do a lovely job of compression-amplifying. If you've been turned off by crappy streaming audio from Realnetworks, you have to try this.

My conclusion is, this totally rocks, and we don't need Microsoft's help in getting streaming media on Linux. Just the opposite I'd say. What we need to do is (1) beat on more sites to give us streaming mp3 (or we won't bloody go to your site, thanks) (2) give the people that are working on free video codecs for Linux all the support we can.