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Super MP3 Will Feature User Tracking
An anonymous reader writes "Next generation super MP3 files will support four-channel audio tracks and contain what's dubbed Light Weight Digital Rights Management (LWDRM) code to track it's owner via p2p programs." We've mentioned these multi-channel, DRM-ified MP3s before.
Wow, four whole tracks. That's about two hundred and fifty one fewer than Ogg Vorbis, if I recall correctly.
IIRC OGG Vorbis can support upto 255 channels. Shame its not more mainstream.
As for the p2p tracking, people may not use it because of this or it may just get cracked.
I cannot see a single legitimate reason why people would dump MP3 for this when they can simply switch to the much better LC-AAC in the mp4 container such as Apple and Nero are using now. 4 channels, optional DRM, standardized tagging (id3 is NOT a part of the mp3 spec people!) and lower bitrates, plus better handling of problematic samples.
Jeremy
Umm...Ogg is already DRMless, multichannel, and pretty much maturized.
Why repeat ourselves??
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
What use is 5.1 if CDs (most anyway) only have 2 channels?
... are a few uses I can think of off the top of my head. DVD-A and SACD are both hi-fidelity audio formats, and just because it's an MP3 doesn't mean that it has to be used for music. It could be used for an audio track for a movie file.
Why don't we just stick with Ogg Vorbis audio compression for our file trading needs?
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Some distros ship MPlayer... that plays wma just fine, I'm not sure if it even checks the Draconian Rights Malware.
They want to be encoding standard on HD-DVDs. Well, the DVD consortium will not consider any format that isn't open and controlled by the appropriate standards body. So MS submitted WM-9 to SMPTE, and it has now been accepted and standardised. It is available to everyone under standard licensing terms.
Now notice I said open, not free. It is like MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AAC, MP3 and so on. Anyone many implement the standard for a fixed licensing fee ($0.10 per decoder, $0.20 per encoder) but it isn't free of charge. As a pracitcal matter they'd probably ignore not-for-profit, source-only implementations like the MPEG consoritum ignores Xvid.
But yes, it's open and controlled by SMPTE now. Your money goes to MS if you license it, but the fees are fixed, and any changes to the standard must be approved by SMPTE and will be given to all licensees as part of the license. It now is a viable alternative to MPEG-4, and it is one of the three finalists for the HD-DVD format.
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LD players were still made until 2002:
http://home.q03.itscom.net/nsa/PioneerLD-S
According to a test of several hundred models at DVDrhelp.com, DVD-R has a 90+% compatibility rate.
Good DVD blanks can be purchased for under $1 a piece in quanities of 25 or so.
One CAN get an HD-ready TV now, 27" for a little over $500 - from Samsung and a couple other players, some widescreen 30" HD-ready sets go for under $1000. The difference in even such a "small" set is that it is a progressive scan TV - very much reduced flickering. I find it highly amusing that geeks clutch to an interlaced TV set when I'm sure they probably wouldn't tolerate using interlaced modes on their computer monitors.
Some of the DVD players with best high-end value are in the $200 to $500 range, particularly those with a Faroudja DCDi deinterlacer and a Matsushita MPEG decoder. There are simply no equivalents that use these parts made by the Chinese names. All it takes is a side-by-side comparison to see the difference. All it takes is comparing any chinese player with any one of the higher rated models in the Secrets DVD shoot-out, many of which street or have streeted in the $200 to $400 range. These sites also have neat pictures of the kind of flaws that DVD players generate, often the cheaper the player, the more of these flaws it has.
Frankly to say that a $30 player is as good as a $5000 Denon is silly, I can see MPEG decoding flaws in my sister's $50 player on a 15 year old 19" TV with an RF input that don't show up on my Pioneer or Panasonic DVD players on a 27" screen or XGA projector fed with a component video source. That DVD player uses the same ESS decoding MPEG chip as most of the cheap Chinese players.
Secrets DVD player shoot-out 2004
Secrets DVD player shoot-out 2002-2003
Test materials for the benchmarks
Licenses only come into play, if you want other rights in addition to what copyright law says. In practice, that is almost never the case.
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