DVD Player Chipsets To Support Windows Media Files

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this article in EETimes, Microsoft previewed its next generation Windows Media technology, and said that chipset makers that account for 90% of home DVD players will be including the technology in their upcoming chipsets. I hope the various courts looking into Microsoft's monopoly examine this closely, there is a lot of potential for Microsoft to extend its monopoly here. The next logical step would be for them to pay movie studios to produce Windows Media format movies that are available before or cost less than regular DVD format, that is, if they are made available in regular DVD format at all! This would also be a neat way for studios to force us all to upgrade our existing DVD players use the now-cracked CSS." Ton van der Liet points out this article on ZDNet, writing: "Microsoft touts the advantages of Windows Media, such as longer playback. Wasn't MPEG-4 supposed to do this? And aren't the newest Windows Media codecs based on a draft of the MPEG-4 standard?"

Comments

Re:I'm pleased...

[MtViewGuy]

If I remember reading correctly, some months ago someone actually compared the sound quality of MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Windows Media Audio formats. And WMA won going away, with most reviewers saying it was the closest to the original in sound quality.

It'll be interesting to see if Ogg Vorbis comes up with a better codec to compete against the WMA 8 format.

Stand Up For Your Beliefs and Rights - Use your $$

[fallen1]

I fully agree. Most people here on /. tend to get up in arms about one thing or another and a good bit of us do something about it. Well, now is the time for a fair majority of us to really do something and let the manufacturers know WITH YOUR DOLLARS. Write to any company who plans to use WMP technology in their machines and let them know you will not be buying their products - and why. Also mention the fact that many people in your circle will also not be buying and then get those people to write the company as well. When they see enough dollar signs with "will not be buying" attached they will listen. Microsoft be damned.. I don't live in a M$ world, nor do I want to.

Before I get flamed - I'm not totally against Microsoft as I use some of their products in my daily life, I'm just getting really tired of them trying to "control all that you see and hear" to borrow a phrase.

It's for a new version of WMP

[alen]

ZDNet had the story yesterday. The next version of MS windows media player is scodenamed Corona. It's double the DVD quality and 5.1 sound.

WMV is no longer based on MPEG-4

[Utopia]

Windows Media V7 was based on MPEG4 but the newer V8 codecs (which are much more efficient)
are no longer based on MPEG4.

Re:WMV is no longer based on MPEG-4

[Utopia]

To add to my post.

wmvdmod.dll implements ISO MPEG-4.
There are different versions of these :
Microsoft MPEG-4 Standard Video Codec
Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v1
Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v2
Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec v3

wmv8dmod.dll implements the new
Microsoft Windows Media Video v8

Who is this Anonymous Coward Kidding

[yoink!]

Really folks! Let's be a bit serious here: "...22 Hours of Music from a single CD." A single CD! I can compress my music in to 8 bit stereo 96kbps mp3s, or an equivalent Ogvorbis bitrate and fit more than 22 hours of music on a CD. THe point is do we really want that much music on a CD. With SACD quietly penetrating the market and available on many DVD players, sampling rates in the MHz range, why do we keep insisting on lowering the quality of the music we listen too. We all know the WMA and other such formats, including MP3s are still lossy compression architechtures, and until fractal compression makes its way into media file formats, all this jazz is just that... empty words.

Re:I'm pleased...

[jonathan_ingram]

There was one recent newspaper test, done very badly, comparing files encoded at different bitrates, non-blind, which said WMA was best. This was about as far from scientific as it is possible for an 'objective' test to be. Luckily, there is a properly organised test underway to compare WMA, MPC, AAC, MP3 and Ogg at 128kpbs (which is still a very popular bitrate). To participate, go to
http://ff123.net/128test/instruct.html

This test is actually being analysed properly, using the insights gained from his previous 128kbps test, whose results you can find here). You can see the preliminary results here: http://ff123.net/128test/interim.html. In particular, look at the results of the last of the three test files. With overall 95% confidence we can say that on this test clip:
mpc is better than xing
ogg is better than xing
lame is better than xing
aac is better than xing
mpc is better than wma8
ogg is better than wma8
lame is better than wma8
aac is better than wma8

Aside from this, listening tests have previously shown that WMA8 is better than WMA7 at the low end (sub 64kpbs), at the expense of being worse at the middle to high end (112kpbs upwards). For listening to music on anything that costs more than $10, you would do best to stay away from WMA (and, looking at the other results on the page I previously mentioned, from Xing encoded MP3s as well...).

Re:Why are MPEG standards so slow to develop?

[gordguide]

MPEG video formats began with the formation of the Moving Picture Experts Group in 1988.
MPEG-1 Finalized 1992
Digital storage at rates up to 1.5 MegaBits per Second (Mbits/s). Essentially a toolbox; it is up to the user (or whomever) to decide which tools to incorporate.
MPEG-2 Began 1990, in 1992 expanded to include coding of HDTV and thus the proposed MPEG-3 (HDTV) format was abandoned. Finalized 1994. Data rates below 10 Mbits/s. Special consideration of interlaced and scalability incorporated.
MPEG-3 Abandoned, see MPEG-2.
MPEG-4 Began 1994, and evolved with standards issued and refined 1996, 1997. Up to 2Mbits/s. Incorporates TV/film, computer and multimedia needs. High error tolerance, interactive functionality and compression efficency are key components. Includes all functions in MPEG-1 and -2.
MPEG-7 (2001, further evolution possible). An all encompassing standard. "... MPEG-7 [4] is intended to describe audiovisual information regardless of storage, coding, display, transmission, medium, or technology. It will address a wide variety of media types including: still pictures, graphics, 3D models, audio, speech, video, and combinations of these (e.g., multimedia presentations). Examples of MPEG-7 data are an MPEG-4 stream, a video tape, a CD containing music, sound or speech, a picture printed on paper, or an interactive multimedia installation on the web. ..." * Important to note that MPEG-7 describes information about the content, rather than the content itself. As such, quality is dependant on what is described (ie it may incorporate MPEG-4 video).

* D-Lib Magazine
September 1999
Volume 5 Number 9
ISSN 1082-9873
MPEG-7
Behind the Scenes
Jane Hunter
Distributed Systems Technology Centre
University of Queensland
jane@dstc.edu.au

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, LaserDiscs are analog.

But, true that VCDs are crappy because they are on 650MB CD media and have to be played back by early 90s-style low power hardware.

KiloBITS vs. KiloBYTES

[yerricde]

Lets assume you can fit 7GB (as opposed to 700MB) on a DVD.

No, lets assume you can fit 8 GB (8.4 billion bytes) on a dual-layer DVD. This is 8 * 1048576 kilobytes. Divide that by 32,400 seconds (9 hours) for the Godfather trilogy, and you get about 256 kilobytes or 2 megabits per second. (For comparison, the binary code for the NES game Super Mario Bros. 3 fits into 3 megabits.)

So now instead of 23kb/s you can get 230kb/s. Holy fucking shit, that's barely enough for a stereo mp3 stream!

You confuse kilobits with kilobytes. An average MP3 data rate of 24 kilobytes (192 kilobits) per second is enough for transparent reproduction of stereo audio according to r3mix.net, and even 5.1 channel Dolby Digital uses only 48 kilobytes per second. This leaves 212 kilobytes per second average for video, and MPEG-4 DivX video can easily do DVD quality at this data rate.