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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?"
I DO NOT want WMP technology in my DVD player...
I'll refuse to buy one that includes.
You DVD manufactures listening to me? I *know* you read slashdot.
...because I presume this means I get to keep my music in WMA format now to playback on my DVD player. :)
Now, honestly, you don't think the studios are going to start producing WMV versions of movies instead of standard MPEG-2, do you, just because some of the players will be able to do it? There's just too much market penatration right now for the MPEG-2 based players. Look at how few and far between movies are with DTS (and most of them have simultaneous DD), even though it's present in many receivers and DVD players.
I expect this means that people will be able to burn CD-Rs with WMA and WMV format media and play them on their DVD player. From where I'm standing, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. One wonders why Apple wasn't jumping right into this kind of thing to make sure QuickTime was playable there, too...
So DVDs will have WMA support. Good. More people will buy them and use them. Don't say that "they suck because the do WMA," start complaining if they ONLY do WMA. I think it is good if a DVD player does more, just more options. Imagine one that could do MP*, WMA, avi, vcd, etc, etc. ....
That woudl be a good thing.
When MS starts pushing to get their media formats implemented into hardware, it won't have as much opportunity to change. With the pace of video codecs these days, your DVD player will probably be obsolete by the time you get it home.
"Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson
MPEG-4, and Windows Media may well do great with low bit rate video, but that means it is more compressed. MPEG-2 does very well with higher bit rates and is designed for high quality video, not reasonable quality at a low data rate.
Any new format to replace DVD will likely have to deal with HDTV, a high bit rate high resolution video format. What MS is doing is positioning themelves to supply that new format; they aren't really trying to replace DVD. That'll put them in control of a very lucritive format for decades.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
I can't see this replacing MPEG-2 in DVD players. DVD players are reaching wide market penetration in many countries. That means that there is a huge installed base that is not compatible with these new technologies. The producers and distributors are not going to want to deal with an incompatible media format that increases their production and inventory costs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Hey Slashdot editors, why not make yourselves useful for a change and start tracking and informing us of the producers that resist assimilation, so we can support them in the only meaningful way there is, with our wallets, and keep them viable?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
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.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
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.
boycotting is great from an individual, moral point of view but think about the people who make DVD's and their players. Who's their market? Fact of the matter is that video codecs and software monopolies go waaaay over the head of the average joe - can you really see the herds of western civilisation getting riled at this?
so boycott it, and I and half of slashdot will do the same until they've forgotten about it (should take about a week going by past experience) and we can all feel good but its not going to make a blind bit of difference.
sorry to play the pessimist
The entire point of DVD region encoding is to restrict the availability of these products to allow the producer to sell where they want, for the price they want.
It hasn't worked. It broke. Damn!
This may give them an out. Just start to release to the new standard gradually - dual release (with extra 'extras') to start, then early release, then exclusive release. DVD players are cheap - a lot of people on this site would upgrade if a 20 DVD Star Wars set came out in the new format - you think Bill couldn't persuad George?? "HOW many zeros???"
I don't think this is the format that will do it - but in the next 2 or 3 years a new DVD format will come along with WAY tougher restrictions.
Actually. I think 10-view DVDs will be the next big thing from the studios. They'll sell those babies for $5-10 and you'll only be able to play them 10 times (they put a film on the disk which goes opaque in the laser). Then its useless. They'll push them through rental shops to start with.
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.
Yes, I'm sure they'll hear about this, but will they care, no. The problem here is the focus of the anti-trust suits focus on the Windows OS and abusing that monopoly. Microsoft isn't extending themselves into the DVD market (and the console market) by abusing they're monopoly position in the OS market. Remember, MS is allowed to compete in as many markets as it likes, as long as they compete in a fair (and I use the word loosely) manner, and they don't gain a position in that market due to a monopolistic position in another market.
Last Christmas everyone and their mother got a DVD player. DVD already has serious market penetration, and it's set to last the next 10 years or so. People are not going to go out and buy new DVD players any time soon.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Since Microsoft couldn't even do the DVD CSS correctly with their XBox, how would they come up with their own format.
I hope that I'm not the only one to spot just how ironic this whole thing is.
Bringing irony to the Slash-masses
Dude, do you know what "leveraging a monopoly" means? It means that they use thier ubiquity (monopoly) in other markets to place undue pressure on existing markets, in order to have their new products made the standard.
Face the facts: Microsoft has enough money to outright BUY a movie production house, several directors, and a DVD manufacturer. One big blockbuster of a movie (the "killer app" phomenon), and Microsoft formats suddenly exist on every new DVD player sold. Some kickback (in the form of "reduced-cost licensing") to the non-MS DVD makers to start dropping support for non-MS formats, and guess what? New DVD producers will begin to only make movies in the MS format.
2 + 2 = 4.
TheNewWazoo
What's the purpose of this? So what a DVD player can play WMF. Yeah for them.
Actually, I'm quite jaded on this issue. First, did you know that the MPAA gets cuts from every DVD sold? (You did)... not surprised. But did you also know that the MPAA gets liscensing fees for DVD tech from about $1,000,000. There's a reason China created the standard of SVCD. I'd rather not contribute to an orginazation that makes draconian 'rules' and essentially legislates thier tech to us. Instead of a DVD player, I invest in svcd's and have a tv in/out 500 mHz athalon for our movie purposes at home. VHS is just fine for us.
Josh Crawley
If DVD players include WMV formats, then they could very start using flashable ROMs or some other method of updating codecs by the end user. If this happens, then DVD players could become much more powerful by adding support for the latest greatest technologies.
just like slashdot is boycotting gifs. Except for the slashdot icons.
What kills the standard is when the standards body mopes around taking so long to establish the standard.
Also an issue is when, as is almost always the case, they charge $400 for a printed copy of the standard. Because 'it's so expensive to come up with standards' as I am sure the ANSI people are eager to tell us.
Standards should all be published openly online. ALL of them. It shouldn't be a rich-man-club that can afford to read them.
Until that day, interests like Microsoft will always be able to pre-empt 'standards' with things that become the defacto standard.
Mostly this is a good idea. Makes it easy to create video-discs that are playable in DVD-players. There is nothing wrong about that.
The problem is the format, which is closed, proprietary and patented. It gives Microsoft total control over it. This can only contribute to increasing their already dominant monopoly situation.
I just cannot understand what would be so wrong about Microsoft having to release all of their protocols and formats under royalty-free licenses (Or RAND for commercial entities). Closed protocols and formats have ABSOLUTELY no benefits to the consumers whatsoever.
Windows XP has built into it now the capacity to capture and edit video (so say the ads) but *ONLY in the Windows Media format*
Stop. Ponder that. Consider that Apple is now pushing their own OS's ability to capture, edit, and burn DVD video. In MPEG2 no less.
God forbid MS would just *use the existing standards* that are in place and working-very-well-thank-you-very-much. I guess they get to claim this move as an 'innovation.'
Blech. Signatures.
A new video codec will boost performance 20 percent over current-generation video codecs, and will enable the playback of high-definition 720 x 1,280 progressive scan video at 24 frames per second, said Will Poole, vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division of Microsoft. Using Windows Media's 4-to-1 compression ratio advantage over MPEG-2, "studios could put all the Godfather movies or an entire musician's discography on a single CD," said Poole.
Ok, I might believe that windows media compresses 20% better than DVD. But I refuse to believe that using windows media format, you can fit ALL the Godfather movies on ONE CD.
Godfather 1: 175 minutes
Godfather 2: 200 minutes
Godfather 3: 170 minutes
Total = 545 minutes. Even on a 700 meg CD, that's 1.28 megabytes per minute for audio and video, or 23 KILOBYTES per second. . I wonder how good that's gonna look?
more anti-microsoft pile-ons...
"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!"
Apple's already there. They have major licensing deals with movie studios to ONLY release new movie trailers in Quicktime format. It's a PITA to see these trailers if you don't want Apples newest nag-soft. (Pay for QT? Let me get this straight, I'm gonna pay so that I can have the priviledge of watching commercials? Yea!)
As far as the hardware goes, I think it's a great idea. A lower-bandwidth higher-quality codec built into chips? I salivate over the idea of DVD-Quality Video at DSL bandwidth speeds. (And you can't even begin to tell me that uber-lossy-DIVX is DVD quality.)
Geeze guys, as long as some card manufacturers make linux drivers, why complain?
At least with the current standard it takes a while to convert movies to divx, i don't think they'd really like a standard that only requires you to get past the encryption (which has to be weak, or the players would get very expensive).
So this is probably only good for playing your pirate copies of movies on your TV.
I can only hope that the proposal in the courst right now for the MS settlement case goes through, the MS be prohibited from issuing "breakware" stuff that breaks other companies systems, software, etc.
I have said this many times before, but I used to like MS stuff alot, but now it seems the everything new thring they do just makes me more and more cynical of them. They have lost my trust long ago and far away.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
They said the same thing a year or so ago with NUON. Oh, NUON enhanced players are going to rock your world. NUON enhanced players are going to revolutionize DVDs. NUON enhanced players will get you chicks. I see this as more 'Nowadays, you can buy a DVD player that will play a CD full of MP3s. Now, it'll also play a CD full of whatever WMP spits out.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Windows Media V7 was based on MPEG4 but the newer V8 codecs (which are much more efficient)
are no longer based on MPEG4.
DVDs, VCD's and music CD's are the most commonly played thing on DVD players right now. MP3 CD's are probably trailing a little, but many DVD players now support them as well.
Think of the codecs that are the most popular after these -- and like it or not, Windows media are pretty high up there. After this, they'll probably be looking at Quicktime, Realmedia and divx. Of course, the movie industry probably hates divx, and so if they're going to discriminate against anything, they'll probably discriminate against divx. On the other hard, the same DVD player companies that make region free players and players that can turn off Macrovision probably know that we'd want divx too and would probably give it to us :)
Windows media files are already being supported by many (most?) mp3 players. Like it or not, they're becoming a standard -- and they have the `content control' (translation: copy protection) that the industry wants.
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.
This is a serious question. DVD has certainly taken off, and people expect that DVD players and movies to be the hot item on the Christmas shoppers' lists this year; I've read that up to now, about 5 million homes have DVD players; now that they've surprassed the $100 market, they expect to see upwards of 10 million homes to have them. That number could easily double in the next year alone.
With that well-established market, will the movie companies and electronics markets shoot themselves in the foot by releasing DVDs that solely use the 'new' format and thus completely blocking off 5 million players from watching it? I don't think they're that stupid. There's parallels to the copyright scheme used by the RIAA studios to prevent CDs from being copies or ripped on computers, but RIAA understands that only a "small minority" (from 0 to 50% of the consumers) would be affected by this, and in most cases, these affected consumers have another option in which to listen to the music (stereo rack or portable CD player). Here, we're talking about complete unplayability of the disk without going out to buy a second DVD player.
(Note that there are specific cases of some DVDs being incompatible with certain players. However, these tend to be isolated cases; a single DVD may fail to work on a certain model of player, and rarely does the entire line of DVDs from a specific studio fail on a specific player if one DVD doesn't. In many cases, this are fixed with firmware updates by the makers or similar deals.)
At least, I can't see this forced upgrade happening in the next 5 years. Consumers would backlash harshly against it, with complacency with the VHS format in which all new tapes continue to work with the oldest players. However, we have the HDTV switch looming in 2006; while this might be delayed, it's going to happen at some point, and with studios and stations fighting for encryption of the signal from reciever to screen, the DVD market players may start pushing this forced upgrade as to remove the older DVD players from the market. But if they try to do this at the same time that people are forced to buy $100 converter boxes or $1000+ TV sets, they're going to find even more consumer backlash.
Instead, I expect that maybe we'll have a decade before "DVD Enhanced" movies are released, forcing those older players to be removed, and thus getting the market saturated with players tha support this WMP encoding in addition to any other changed the DVD spec may offer. This is not necessarily unreasonable, but again, given that VHS systems from 1990 are still usable today, this might be taken poorly by the consumer. Of course, by that point, the DVD-recordable models may be predominate and sufficiently low cost (less than $200) as to make it attractive to upgrade anyway.
(*) I beleive that this move is more an attempt to capture the market that Apple has with the ease-of-use video editing and DVD burning that it has built into the MacOS system. If MS can offer a similar path through intergration with XP and WMP, and avoid the encryption via MPEG-2 (a licensing nightmare), they'd have a low cost opponent against Apple's dominance in this area.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Embrace and Extend, my friend...Embrace and Extend...
m l
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.ht
Microsoft is offering a solution to a non-problem that weakens the benefits of DVD v.s. previous technologies.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Just like we voted with our dollars against the MPAA and CSS?
Yeah, right.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
WMF DVDs.. hahah.
Attempting to download decompressor, please wait..
Could not download decompressor.
Attempting to download decompressor, please wait..
Could not download decompressor.
Attempting to download decompressor, please wait..
Could not download decompressor.
Attempting to download decompressor, please wait..
Could not download decompressor.
And then you get audio only. I for one can't wait.
The MS software DVD player shipped with 2K doesn't work properly. Windows Media Player is dodgy as f*** and now they want to combine the two into DVD players that can't even be patched when they realise the players won't play or crash when you try to skip etc.. Hah. What farce.
At least when Sony DVD players crash they have the decency not to show you a bluescreen.
I've opted for a tiny PC by the TV to use as DVD player. At least I can patch / update / get cracks for the necessary software so that I can actually watch the DVDs I've paid lots of money for. Heh.
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
MPEG video formats began with the formation of the Moving Picture Experts Group in 1988. ..." * 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).
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.
* 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
I think you and I are in the minority.
It's is pretty annoying to hear everyone cheering "boycott the mpaa and DVD", only in the very next article to here about all the cool features that are going to be available on the Star Wars Phantom Menace release with everybody cheering "I can't wait!"
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Media companies are generally conservative, and are not going to jump to MS's new standard, even if it is MS and if it is twice the quality (or whatever whiz-bang other features it has). People don't upgrade their DVD players like they do their PCs, they aren't designed that way. DVD players play movies: 10 years from now, it's still going to take you 2 hours to watch a 2 hour movie, there really is no reason for upgrading. If you're a media company, and want to sell the most movies you can, you're going to want your movie to work in the widest number of players possible - if you're releasing software and (ignoring development costs) want to make the most money possible, you're not going to require Windows XP just because it has the newest features.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Actually, Bill Gates has the total net worth to buy EVERY film studio and everything that goes with it. Think about it. Titanic made, what, like 650 million domestically? And that's the top grossing movie of all time. That's less than 1% of Bills net worth.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I already do.....I use something called.....MP3. It's a standard (well a default one anyway). Until something comes along that will improve upon this, noone will buy it(well just for that feature alone). Anyone remember the Music industry trying to put out stuff on Minidisc's? It flopped because CD's were a standard (although the MD was superior since it could have track names attached). Now, MP3 is the standard. Yeah it ain't open like OGG, but ask your mom what a MP3 is and she will know. Ask her what a OGG or WMA is and she probably doesn't know. I don't think of this as a bad thing until Windows Media only players are developed and are the only ones sold. I look at this as just another cool thing a DVD player could do along with VCD and MP3 on most common ones available today.
Gorkman
would you WMP in a house,
...
would you WMP with a mounse?
I would not buy them in the rain,
I would not buy them on a train,
I would not could not with a mouse,
I would not could not with in a house,
I DO NOT want WMP technology in my DVD player... sam I am!
Microsoft now can tell XP users "use WMF and burn CD's of your videos" watch them in modern DVD players... Much cheaper than DVD burn technology, it gives them an In into the desktop video market. Soon instead of burning weddings etc.. onto DVD those folks will offer cheaper MWF Cds. Download music /videos on your computer and burn them to cd to watch on your tv...
And only creatable on Microsoft PC's. Very clever indead. Although they may be too late to the party.
How long till these are playable on Xbox too.....
Please tell me why it is "anti-competitive" for DVD manufacturers to support Windows Media. Simply because MPEG-4 exists and is an open standard does not necessitate that manufacturers support it to the exclusion of other formats.
This is just the start of what is to come with it's newest tenticle: Microsoft Research. The whole idea behind the division is to grab the brightest people out of acadamia with a fat paycheck (from monopoly profits) and some great collegues to work with(previously bought out). This way they can come out with products such as WMA with an almost instant time to market buy releasing a new version of Windows Media Player or DirectX. This is great if you are running Windows. You get the latest algorithms straight out of the labs. Kind of sucks though for the rest of us.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
From the article: In particular, the updated video format is capable of quality double that of DVDs while taking up half the space, Fester said.
I've always wondered, how do they measure "double the quality"? Is there a heuristic comparison they can run on the decompressed and original images to determine quality loss? (I say heuristic because perceived quality is most definitely not the same thing as information loss -- which is the whole basis behind the psychoacoustic models used for MP3s. Do they use similar things for video?) Can they say, "this new codec is only 1.8 times the quality of the old one"? Or is there some guy watching the video who goes, "that looks twice as good!"?
Further, wouldn't twice the quality in half the space be translatable to some single measure, such as four times the quality in the same space, or equal quality in one quarter the space?
Sounds like marketing crap to me, but I could be wrong.
-Puk
For a second there, I read that as "DVD Player Chiapets to support windows media files". I need another drink, or maybe I've had to many.
You can't make a calculation like that because you do know know even the approximate constants associated with time, size and bitrates with the CODEC method Microsoft intends to use.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Ever consdier how much time and energy you waste watching every move MS makes. How much free press you give MS in your ranting and raving. Rule one of marketing is make sure people talk about you no matter if it is good or bad. Because the public has a short memory for detail and only remember they heard something about MS. So later when at the store buying software, they get MS, because they remember hearing about it a lot.
As many other have pointed out spend your time talking the benefits of open source, FreeBSD and Linux, not why MS is bad. You talk about MS more than you talk about yourselfs.
They'll probably just give better prices to those players that only include WMA. The explicit exclusion of others will probably wait a few years... but XP may cease to recognize the file type, or use it for something else. So if a player can handle WMA, then that may be all that gets used. (Auto updates of XP could remove any competing players. It's in the contract [or at least in the published beta of the contract].)
After they have sufficient penetration, they just increase the price differential until effectively everything is WMA only. Any agreements to not create MP3 players would probably be verbal only (and along the lines of "You're such a great customer that why don't we give you this special price discount. We really like the way that you have kept your WMA players free of interference from extraneous software. It makes things so much more efficient." This would probably allow them to get off without penalty even if the agreement came to light).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What is the real plan here? I see another thing happening with this. Most of the new "copy" protections on audio CD's rendered their playback useless on anything but a standard audio CD player. This results in many unhappy consumers. With this new ability by DVD players, now the record companies can start including MS encoded audio tracks so they to can play the CD on more then the standard cd player and have support for more electronic devices? Imagine now that you can listen to the uncompressed raw audio with an audio cd player (and only still left on the disk for backward compatibility), and the encrypted, encoded MS version when the cd in played in anything else. What a plan. Its a win-win for big business and a lose-lose for Joe consumer.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
If I remove the topic "Microsoft" from my Slashdot front page, will it also remove all the senseless trolling by Slashdot editors against Microsoft?
Come on, guys, is this so bad? Yes, I'm a conspiracy theorist, too, but I hardly think DVD manufacturers would go with WMV as their de facto format. It's not *that* good. As /. pointed out before, they are even looking into MPEG-4 as the new format.
Besides, how is this different from DVD players now? Ours at home supports MP3's, VCD, etc. etc. It's just another format to throw into the mix. I see no harm in that. I like playing MP3's on my DVD when I'm away from the computer, working on housework or something like that. Hack, even firing up those Christmas tunes in the living room while setting up the tree is nice. With this, it's just another format you can play on your DVD systems.
SkepTech wrote:
> And what will Apple do about it?
>
> What's their market share again? Maybe 5% in a good sales month?
What did Apple do about the plan to include copy protection in hard drives? They opposed it, and together with several other companies, put a stop to it.
What did Apple do about the Microsoft settlement plan to dump $1 billion in MS software and reconditioned hardware on our poor school systems? Jobs and Apple screamed 'bloody murder!", and the judge in the case is at least listening. This is the first time in five years that Jobs has personally and forcefully spoke out against Microsoft.
Apple's influence does not match its marketshare. Microsoft is usually too busy copying them for that to be true. Apple's size is also very temporary. At one time, they had 40% of the market. They are getting set up to retake that marketshare. They are one of the only desktop computer makers to be firmly in the black, and hiring instead of doing massive layoffs. Given their 26 stores, OS X, and the new hardware coming out possibly as soon as next month, they will finally be ready. The December 3rd Time ad, "The only thing we have a monopoly on is complements", was a gauntlet tossed directly at Microsoft. 2002 is going to be a *very* interesting year for Apple. And remember, any increase in Apple's marketshare, whittles away at Microsoft's core monopoly: Windows. Without that monopoly, Microsoft has no power and no teeth.
Apple does have a concern about this issue. Not only does this hurt QuickTime, but also iDVD, DVD Pro, and Apple's superdrive. Do you think they will not care about the Mac's DVD authoring capablilities? Do you think Apple will like using Microsoft's formats instead of their own?
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra, "We need you today!"
The heroic, wonder-working deity returns, in TWO days!
There's something I haven't yet seen posted regarding this article. Slashdot editors and posters are running right to the "Microsoft wants to take over my DVD player" without looking at the tiny step in between.
Consider these three facts:
1. New copy-protected CDs come with Windows Media tracks for your computer instead of regular audio tracks.
2. People are complaining that these new CDs won't work in their DVD players.
3. Thus, the MPAA encourages Microsoft to put WMA support into DVD players so that people will stop whining about their CDs being unplayable.
Once 90% of the people can play the CD on their Windows computer, and most of the others can play it on their DVD player, very few people complain about copy protection.
Microsoft and the MPAA undoubtedly have larger intentions here, but this small facet of the whole WMA deal has been completely overlooked.
Keep complaining about copy protection, and please try to buy a nice high-end DVD player NOW, rather than later. We don't need copy protected CDs, and we can make them fail, but not if we keep buying the technology that makes them work.
Let's all stop superior technology like the WMA format because it belongs to a company that is a big player in some other area than soundformat technology.
Like the world is gaining anything with that. Why is it so hard for some people to realize sometimes actually something good and usable is created by that 5 billion $$$ research budget.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
MS is creating an environment to let bright people work with other bright people. Yes these smart people get a lot of money for that. But, if these smart people were not into the concept of 'working and getting payed for it', would they accept a job at Microsoft Research? Probably! You know why? Because there are no limits, plus other bright people work there too. The budgets are high, while at universities they're (much) lower, the paychecks make it possible to live a life without moneyproblems and you can work at all the new stuff and toys you can think about.
Cooking up new technology that will be used by millions is another plus. Why is this a bad thing? Because YOU tend to HATE microsoft? Get a life.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Wazoo, that's an interesting idea, but it ignores the competitive position Microsoft is in with respect to AOL/TimeWarner.
:-)
While MS does have a considerable amount of cash (not a crime), they would never ever ever buy a movie production house. Why? Well as you know this would put them in direct competition with other big IP companies, which they are *desparately* trying to court. The "we won't compete with you" argument has so far been very successful, landing them deals with Disney, NBC, etc. Steve Ballmer even stated recently that, if they had it to do over again, they wouldn't have done the MSNBC deal, for exactly the reason I stated.
For the moment, I'll ignore your misuse of the monopoly leverage claim.
Is there an open standard choice? All I know of are the three standard (Apple, Real, & MS). I would prefer an open standard on dvd players.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
As a Multimedia Producer who does DVD authoring, we do keep up with the sales numbers in the US.
According to this chart DVD player sales in the US are already above 22 Million, not including DVD ROM drives. Granted, some homes (including mine) have more than one. Conservatively, 15 million homes have DVD players.
Now,you totally missed the point. The point is not "legacy" DVDs. It's "next-gen" DVDs. Whatever the pundits say, Microsoft is doing a great job working on HDTV technologies. The X-box supports HDTV resolutions. The simultaneously released Game Cube does not. This new technology supports HDTV resolutions as well. This is simply a business trying to get ahead of the curve!
So, you slam Microsoft for "unscrupulous business practaces" when they release competing projects, and then slam them when they try to bring something new to the marketlpace.
Cory
(apparently, a microsoft apologist, today.)
The test isn't completely blind - the listeners are told in advance which of the samples is the original.
In order to be completely blind, the original recordings should have been included in the test, to eliminate listener bias (If one person consistenly rated the original as worse than the encoded samples, then that person's results should be taken with a grain of salt.)
But it is a far step ahead of the other "test".
Yeah, I'm going to vote with my dollars against Microsoft.
--
E_NOSIG
So the closest you can do is vote with your money by buying DVD players that don't support WM, HDTVs that don't support HDCP, etc.
No, the closest thing you can do is not buy one at all.
I don't own an HDTV.
I don't own a DVD player. (Ok, technically I have one in the TiBook work bought for me, but I've never watched a DVD on it and I don't own any DVDs.)
I don't own an MP3 player, especially not one that has content restrictions.
Contrary to popular belief, you can live without these things. Saying "Oh, I came close" is just a cop out- kinda like we hear the /. regulars constantly talk about being free of the Evil Empire yet somehow they manage to play Windows-only games.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Assume that the average consumer purchases a non-upgradable DVD player containing CSS and WMA decoding algorithms. The consumer also buys a disk containing a non-changing image.
With both images static, if WMA is cracked, the cat is out of the bag. Again. And it's only a matter of time.
So bring it on...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
I'm no expert, but I believe MS did this to get Windows consumers to use their "movie editting" product. I don't think it is intended to be used by the major studios. Seen in this light, MS avoids the problems of burning DVDs that currently plague Apple's DVD - playback on consumer devices.
MS neatly avoids having to support MPEG-4 and the battling standards to determine which DVD recordable format wins. They win regardless since Windows users will be using WMP formats, not any kind of open standard format such as MPEG 4.
As for Apple and Real licsensing QuickTime and Real respectively, it doesn't really matter. QuickTime is the basis of MPEG-4 and Apple is expected to have the next version of QuickTime support MPEG-4, beating many competitor's to the punch. Real recently said they'd support MPEG-4.
Nope, I think MPEG-4 will be the default DVD recording format in the near future. MS neatly avoids the implmentation problem by going to the manufacturers. Its a great business move to prevent Windows users from having to watch their home movies on their computers, but the real impact probably won't be known until DVD recorders are widespread.
And if you scratch said disc....
I can't see this going anywhere, like the 'inclusion' of Windows CE on the Dreamcast. For starters, Theres already an established base of DVD players out there. Most of them still work. The average consumer replaces entertainment equipment for two reasons:
A- its got some great quality/feature upgrade
b- its broke
WMA enabled DVD players offer NO real advantage to standard MPEG players. Sure, i'd rather not have to change between the two episode 1 dvd's, but its not like its a laserdisk. I don't have to get up or put up with a pause after every 30-45 minutes. Theres what? 6 hours of content on these discs as there is.
People embraced dvd's quickly because they offered more. Much better quality plus hours of extra footage and supplimental material. All on a 5" disc that didn't degrade like a tape. It was an improved laserdisk, in every way except you still couldn't record (hell, you can barely do that now).
Now...as for "all the Godfather movies or an entire musician's discography" bit...i heard that when dvd's came out. You can do that with a current DVD...are you willing to pay for it?
If an average CD costs $18 now, imagine the cost of 6-10 cd's worth of material on one disc. That's what boxed sets are for. Also imagine navigating said disc. Skip to track 110....sounds like an mp3 cd....and like i started with, what happens if you scratch it?
Now, the one thing i can't really argue with (much) is the higher resolutions enabled by DVD 2.0 (copyright m$). except the fact that the tv's to take advantage of said resolutions are still 5 years away from being affordable. This feature sounds like it will be limited to the high-end set for years, if not always. It just seems to me that the large-screen projection style tv's have always been priced about 4x the cost of the "average" tv.
Now, i realize that i could be wrong about this..next year at this time i could be embarrased about my inability to "look to the future" just like i thought that I'd never want a hard drive over 20gigs. But this seems to be a benefit only to the content providers, and reeks like divx (the dvd 'format') did years ago.
besides, if you want to protect content, don't compress it further, bloat it. DVD's were difficult to copy when they were introduced because few people had the storage or bandwidth to copy or transmit a full movie. Shrinking file sizes only makes it one step easier to copy.
I bet they will use "Superior digital rights management" as an advertising slogan and people will think its a good thing (if it has superior in the name, it must mean its better. The new players will be designed to stop playing old css-based dvds at midnight january 1 2003 so everyone will have to buy all their films again. The movie industry can do this neat trick again when hdtv disks come out. Also, the new players will need to be plugged into a phone line once a month to "upgrade" (i.e download new DRM systems when the old ones are cracked - i mean, the new one that replaces the old one that was already cracked)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Nope, I think MPEG-4 will be the default DVD recording format in the near future.
Why? MPEG4 is "the standard for multimedia for the fixed and mobile web", what does this have to do with DVD? MPEG4 was designed for streaming over a network. MPEG2 is a great fit for DVD and HDTV. There is no reason to abandon it for MPEG4.
Q.
There may be an interesting side effect here. The moment WMA format becomes implemented in hardware in any significant scale, the format is effectively "fixed" -- since you can't force people to go out and buy a new DVD player every year, you have to make sure that all new audio and video programs are playable on those Version 1 chips.
This means that WMA is no longer a moving target for anyone who wants to reverse engineer the format and put together a compatible player. Undoubtedly the Evil Empire will unleash swarms of lawyers at the first person who does it, but the effort could be lead overseas (that is, until Microsoft realizes that buying the US government wasn't enough and begins to start buying other governments as well).
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
DVD manufacturers don't give a shit what you want. They don't have to. They can phase this into being en masse, and eventually you won't have a choice.
/.'ers out there, who still maintain a Windows boot partition to run Diablo II for Windows. Linux geeks love to scream and bitch about stuff like this, and demand boycotts, and the /. editors still constantly post about how great the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" movies are, usually within hours of complaining about the horrible actions of the movie companies against "freedom."
/. readers are a bunch of lazy, overweight dorks happy to just sit inside enjoying their high-paying computer jobs, and go home at night to engrosse themselves in pop culture.
Hell, in the long run you will end up buying one anyone. So will 99% of the
Geeks have no conviction. In the long run
But Microsoft isn't a monopoly in games.
Correct; the existence of the popular games "Monopoly" by Hasbro and "Basketball" by Naismith demonstrates this. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in video games either; the continued profitability of Sony and Nintendo demonstrate this. However, Microsoft does have a monopoly in the following area: operating systems for machines that can run commercial sim games (i.e. not freeciv). The average sim game (such as simcity, civ, or any RTS) requires a keyboard and a mouse for best efficiency (no, the joypad interface to super nes simcity and the like is not all that efficient), and the machines that come packaged with those input devices as of December 2001 tend to be PCs. A U.S. federal court has decided that Microsoft has a monopoly on PC operating systems.
It is illegal (and termed "money laundering") to finance a new venture (such as Xbox) with funds gained from illegal activity (such as predatory monopolistic behavior).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Someone please explain to me what monopoly Microsoft is using to force all of these poor industry hardware vendors to accept these terms? Yes, those very same poor hardware vendors who adopted CSS.
So, you're telling me that Microsoft could fuck industry hardware vendors through restrictive licenses and cause them to go out of business?
Or, you're telling me that the entertainment industry could fuck all of their customers over, thereby angering them and effectively signing their chapter 11 filings?
If so, what's the problem? And if not, uhm.. what's the problem?
And last I checked, video entertainment still isn't an inalienable right. Write your elected officials!
The only interesting thing in the announcement was support for 720p (1280x720, progressive scan). For the growing HDTV market, this is a great improvement.
I'll reserve judgement until I see two things:
- How restrictive is the format? I don't have any need/desire to copy DVD's, so as long as it doesn't impede the user experience I don't care about underlying protections.
- How good is the *REAL* quality of the video. They use vague terms about the quality relative to DVD, but no quantitative analysis. While the video might look great in a window on my 19" monitor, how does it look on my 34" HDTV, or on a 100" projection system. Current 1080i and 720p HDTV look great in those formats, if this doesn't it's useless to HDTV consumers.
And with Nintendo's gay ass games (pikmin? wtf? and have you seen how fucking gay they made Link
"Gay" means happy. Yes, Link is smiling for the camera. Let me guess, are you a Tori Amos fan?
"Gay" also means homosexual. How does Link look any more homosexual than some of the little hero characters in any anime? And there certainly isn't any "f___ing" or "gay ass" (don't click it) in Zelda 9.
Gamecube looks like it's aimed at the 5-10 year old market
How again is it impossible for 18+ gamers to have fun playing Rogue Leader, Dave Mirra BMX, or Waverace Blue Storm? Just because it isn't as full of gore as Mortal Kombat or Quake III: Arena doesn't mean adults hate it. Heck, the next five years' worth of Capcom Resident Evil games will be GameCube exclusives.
whereas Xbox, despite its flaws, at least looks like something that someone over 12 years old might be able to enjoy.
Not if the right-wingers behind this list of politically incorrect toys get their way: it'll become illegal for retailers to sell M-rated games to children or to adults who don't sign a contract "I will not expose my children to this game." Most reviewers consider the M-rated game "Halo" the only outstanding game for Xbox. Without Halo, Xbox is nothing more than a GameCube with a hard drive and a DVD player.
I am completely unimpressed by nintendo's games
True, Super Smash Bros. Melee isn't a clone of Street Fighter II or Tekken like most of the other fighting games on the market: it introduces battlefield tactics that a flat plane just can't provide.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because it is more flexible. Sure, it will stream but you don't *have* to stream it. Since MPEG-4 will allow all kinds of cool things like multi-language tracks, subtitles, close captioning etc, why would you NOT use it? Plus, with MPEG-4 you can store a current DVD's content on a VCD. MPEG-4 uses an object-based coding standard which makes life much easier for authors, service providers, and end users of interactive multimedia content. These are all features the spec allows.
m l
Quit thinking of DVD as a video deployment format. It is a storage device and as such allows interactive content (including audio and video) to be stored on a single object.
I would also encourage you to read an article that provides the answers you need in greater detail. http://www.webreview.com/mmedia/2001/03_16_01.sht
The absolutely obvious solution to all this is to lure a DVD manufacturer to make a player that can read DiVX. Technically, it would even be legal with DiVX4. Mark my words: if this doesn't happen, the "best" movie trading group in two years will be alt.binaries.movies.wmv. I don't want this kind of future, but I don't see how to prevent it.
Possible salvation: some sane soul makes a linux-based living room DVD player that doesn't have a DVD decode chip but instead a bona fide CPU (Duron? Crusoe?) to do decoding. It also has an ethernet port and can play movies stored anywhere on the home network, and can upload and install new codecs at will--including, of course, DiVX. People, we have the technology to do this now. Please! Please! Can't you hack an X-Box into one of these things? In any case, I promise you I'll buy the first such player that costs US$500 or less.
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Don't worry, in the end you'll end up breaking down and buying one.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Maybe there's security measures in place... I do not know, but given Microsoft's history of security conscious design (lack thereof), there's probably a very interesing WMA/WMV security alert or virus opportunity (depending on the shade of one's hat, I suppose). It'd be really amazing if consumer DVD players had a typical Microsoft security hole in them.... but since they're not networked it's hard to imagine it becoming a major problem. However, consumers have much higher quality standards and generally expect warranty coverage for their DVD player components (something Microsoft doesn't know much about from their buggy-software perpetual-upgrade business model). It's not clear if these new DVD players will just execute code from Microsoft or if the manufactures will re-implement the WMV/WMA "standards".
Anyway, I thought I'd pass along this little tidbit, which I really don't know anything about (but hey, this is slashdot....) It I'm totally off-base, just mod me down.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Sorry, I ment on demand pay per play. You know like divx, but without having to even get the disc, just push a button on the remote.
Yes. I don't have a DVD. Intentionally. (It was because of copy protection issues, but I will remember to check out your comment if they ever resolve that.) I am not aware that MPEG costs to use, but as far as I know I don't use it.
OTOH, I didn't say that this would be sufficient to cause a product not to be used. Merely that it was sufficient to deny it the status of "standard". I frequently use a proprietary graphics program, which has a proprietary file format. I would never consider calling that format a standard. There isn't any reason that everything should be a standard. But calling a proprietary interface a standard does everyone a disservice.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
While no one's mentioned it, it seems likely that the new generation of WMP file formats include support for some manner of MS-Sponsored DRM.
This would be especially likely given the smaller size of the compressed video produced (given that smaller size is often viewed as lowering the barrier to copyright violation, and thus raising the need for DRM).
While it would bother me, it would not surprise me to see the inclusion of a DRM scheme that encourages the proliferation of the MS Windows OS. Additionally, as the WMP format proliferates, expect to see it incorporated quietly into other hardward devices.
At the point that the majority of installed hardware (think CD/DVD players) supports MS's WMP format and an associated DRM, expect that it won't be possible to plead "fair use" before a court for removing the DRM features and encoding to a different medium.
Your data already belong to them, it's too late, become a vinyl nut and learn to love the classics.
Then what's the point of the Xbox if parents are going to lock their kids away from the only game worth playing? Then it becomes an expensive ($330) DVD player. To succeed, a game console needs to penetrate households, and this means it needs launch titles. Currently, GameCube has a better set of launch or near-launch titles (Monkey Ball, Smash Bros 2 [evilpigeon.net], etc).
I'd disagree... the games worth playing for me do NOT include Halo. My list of games that I enjoy includes Dead or Alive 3, Amped, Arctic Thunder, Project Gotham Racing and Oddworld. All of which I'm thoroughly enjoying (particularly Amped).
I'm also looking forward to the other releases... but you can't buy them for love nor money right now... they're all out of stock.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Nice troll.
When 80% of the posters claim they'll boycott MPAA (not even go to movies), and boycott DVDs, and then 80% of the posters claim they "can't wait" for "The Matrix" on DVD, or the Simpsons first season DVD, or whatever, then there's something wrong.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Geeks have no conviction. In the long run /. readers are a bunch of lazy, overweight dorks happy to just sit inside enjoying their high-paying computer jobs, and go home at night to engrosse themselves in pop culture.
Hey! I am not overweight.
an embedded MS security agent in your private network.
Think, Sony Playstation II *created* the Japanese home DVD market. PCs in Japan have quickly tried to converge on home AV market and shortly we will have lots of home AV networked servers (like all the new Vaio towers for the past year).
Anything M$ would like more than to 0wn your house? It will be easy and convenient, and they will also get a revenue stream (a new one or through your utility or maybe NTT DoCoMo) in which lots of nice copyright charges can be inserted. Maybe a few bucks a month for the next DirectX, Harry Potter II on WMV/DVD without commercials, pay per view over DSL etc. It can be done with current technology and infrastructure and it would sell.
I'd guess if the U.S. lets them get away with this (leveraging OS monopoly using WMP which has already been a major tool in killing RealVideo Server, Darwin, Quicktime, etc etc) their company will be one of the most profitable in the 21st C.
So long as new software releases are closed source and break standards, they are laughing all the way to the bank.