RealNetworks Licenses MS Windows Media Codec

fReNeTiK writes, "RealNetworks have announced their licensing of the Microsoft Windows Media streaming format. That brings the number of codecs supported by RealPlayer to 9. CNet story here, Heise News (German) here. This, of course raises an important question: Realplayer being available under Linux, will the next version include the new codec, bringing WMF streaming to Linux and Unix in general?" Based on how slowly RealPlayer has ported their clients to Linux and Unix in the past, it may be a while until we find out. I would personally prefer an open source media player if the codec patent issues can be handled, but sometimes (sigh) you just have to make do with hand-me-downs because they're all you're going to get for a while.

Comments

Re:What about free codecs?

[Tet]

What about free codecs?

By free, I assume you mean open. The problem with open codecs is (at least in the eyes of content providers) copy protection. They see an inability to save streamed RealAudio/ReadVideo, and are happy because their copyrighted works aren't being distributed around the net. An open codec would allow anyone to save the streamed data to a file for later use. In actual fact, the current closed codecs only provide security through obscurity anyway, and will eventually be compromised.

Microsoft knows what it is doing..

[elemur]

..and people are missing the point by looking at the smaller picture. Microsoft is trying to establish itself as a better player in the enterprise and servers markets, and to do this they must deploy more server farms.. especially under W2K.

By allowing Real to support the Windows Media formatt, they are opening up a wider base of clients to use their formats.. and therefore a wider base of clients to use their Windows Media Stream servers. These stream servers are only available for Windows.. and it wouldn't be a big shock for future versions to target W2K as its preferred platform.

This push helps to establish MS in data centers and server farms where it may not have had a presence.. and to expand the presence where it was previously located. They don't care a thing about RealPlayer and MediaPlayer per se.. if you can own the servers, you get a big boost in owning the clients as well.

What about free codecs?

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Every time we get on a movie or music topic people whine about "when will X port Y" and "how come software Z keeps crashing in Linux but not on Windows", etc.

The slightly more clueful say "we need free software that can handle these codecs, that'll solve ALL our problems".

That solves nothing: What about free codecs? Is there anyone working on this? The advantage would be not only freedom, but then we'd also have a standard (or more likely, several standards). If I was halfway qualified I'd work on this myself, unfortunately this post represents the edges of my knowledge.
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ZDNet link

[fReNeTiK]

Just noticed that ZDNet has a story on it too... here .

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the first paragraph is intriguing:

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) proclaimed on Tuesday that long-time rival RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK) -- plus a handful of other vendors, including Yahoo!, Sonic Foundry, AOL Winamp and Lycos Sonique -- had agreed to license Microsoft's Windows Media format technology.

So it's not just about RealNetworks. This looks like a big victory for this format, and MS.

Does anybody know if WMF has SDMI support? I think it is, or at least there are a couple of copyright enforcement mechanisms in there. I have the vague feeling that the RIAA must be very pleased by this...