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Apple's iPod Chip Supports WMA?

Posted by pudge on from the maybe-because-wma-and-its-drm-suck dept.

John writes "Chip manufacturer Portal Player in Santa Clara builds the embedded PP5002 chip in Apple's iPod (allowing the playing of AAC and MP3). It has emerged that the chip firmware, by default, allows the playing of WMA. However, for some reason this is locked by Apple."

5 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ogg! Custom plugins! Grr! by AndyBusch · · Score: 3, Informative

    The thing is, that chip sounds like it's a specialized decoder for 2-3 music file formats. It's not a general-purpose comuting chip, which would be required for interpreting OGG. The extra games are probably handled by a separate processor that handles the playlist management software.

  2. License fees by StarBar · · Score: 5, Informative
    To decode WMA you will most probably pay an upfront fee which could be up to a six figure USD amount depending on how friendly the license owner might think you are. Software licenses are always negotiable and always depending on how eager you are to get it and how close to the next quarter you are. At least that is my first hand experience having both been a buyer and seller of licensed software.

    In addition there is also a royalty involved. For WMA this is true but for AAC you pay only an upfront fee ($15000) but no royalties. That might be a reason not to support WMA by default in the iPod!?

  3. Re:Ogg! Custom plugins! Grr! by imnoteddy · · Score: 3, Informative
    The thing is, that chip sounds like it's a specialized decoder for 2-3 music file formats. It's not a general-purpose comuting chip

    Sorry, wrong, it is a general purpose chipset. See:

    http://www.amd.com/de-de/FlashMemory/FlashApplicat ions/0,,37_1736_6577_8011,00.html

    Which states:

    The PP5002 SuperIntegration(TM) System-On-Chip features dual ARM7TDMI (R) microprocessors.

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  4. PP5002 Spec by Lizard_King · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is the PP5002 spec: http://www.portalplayer.com/products/documents/500 2_brief_0108_Public.pdf

    WMA is indeed supported.

    --
    "My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
  5. Re:It was a bailout by FredFnord · · Score: 4, Informative

    > It was indeed a bailout. It was termed so inside the tech world, and also in the "secular" business press at the time. Do you want
    > some of the many many examples?

    And it is well documented that one of the reasons that everybody thought it was a bailout was because nobody was allowed to mention the real reason that it happened. Which was because Apple discovered that MS had stolen the source code for QuickTime and inserted it whole-cloth into their competing product. Lawsuit, settlement, and large investment.

    Of course, you've heard all of this before and chosen to ignore it all, so I'm sure I can't convince you of anything. But I worked at Apple for a while, and know a couple of the people who were involved in the trial.

    Basically, Apple got some money when it needed it (although they did still have billions in cash and assets, the stock purchase definitely helped), and Microsoft got to look like a 'good company' at a time it needed it. A win-win settlement.

    -fred

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