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Thomson Releases MP3 Surround
Anonymous Howard writes "Thomson has released MP3 Surround, a new MP3 codec. They claim that MP3 Surround supports high-quality multi-channel sound at bit rates comparable to those currently used to encode stereo MP3 material, resulting in files half the size of common compressed surround formats while maintaining backwards compatibility. Wasn't MP3 Pro supposed to be a great new MP3 codec, but never took off? I wonder if this is going to go the same route. Does anyone have a technical view of MP3 Surround? Does it have potential?"
Do i have to remix all my movies now?
I'm sure I read that on Slashdot before. AAC and OggVorbis have pummeled it into oblivion. Netcraft must've confirmed it, right?
Are my Slashdot stories flowing into each other again?
Wonder why people complain that redhat does not even support mp3's and switched back to Windows?
Patents are the reason and I do not want to support such a company. Do you?
http://saveie6.com/
Well, with so much of the internets illegal mp3's already encoded I don't think it will take off.
I mean, theres terabytes out there in mp3 format, and it'd be too much hassle for everyone who has encoded their personal collection to this new mp3 format.
It could take off, but unlikley. If it does, there will be a mix of the two formats, traditional mp3, and this new type.
To me this codec seems more useful for programmers of games and multimedia applications then for home users.
I wanna know- does it have DRM?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
What ever happend to .ogg? I though that was spose to take over..
Once again, MP3 does what most people want it to do, and as such all the MP3 devices out there are good enough for the general public. Plus if its not backwards compatible it wont be adopted. Just accept it already. Even though i love .ogg, i dont think its ever going to take over the market in the near future, heck even sony's dropping its non-support of MP3, not just using aatrac or whatever anymore
drunk chemists
So does that mean I can re-encode my dvds to DiVX with surround sound? Or does that already do it now and I don't know it? Please don't mod me down, it's an earnest question.
Linux at home
You were a troll. You're still a troll.
Your attempt at making people feel bad for you failed.
Kill yourself.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
mp3's surround you!
I'm not so sure surround sound *needs* MP3 compression. DVD Shrink shows movies' 5.1 DTS soundtracks using around 200 - 300MB. That's for a 1 1/2 to 2 hour movie. Not bad for 5 speaker surround, with subwoofer. Not shabby!
Is it possible that most people simply don't have surround sound on their at their computers, or just listen to MP3s using MP3-players thus rendering this codec obsolete for most?
But... what music is in surround? Probably that long hair stuff conducted by some symphony orchestra. Certainly not The Beatles ... unless yetanother version of remastered classics come out.
Screw it. I'll just go downtown and listen to some live music.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Regular people" won't pay anything extra for this... they'll only use it if it's done automatically for them. Perhaps it'll get thrown in with BluRay/HD-DVD on players, and then maybe it'll get phased in, but during that kind of a format change, you're not going to get Bob McCracken going to best buy looking for a progressive scan DVD player and looking for "MP3 Surround" on the spec sheet.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Most of the digital signal transmited on satellite are in MP2 format thats part of the DVB standard and they carry the surround sound. Dolby pro logic
there do seem to be alot of codecs, or music devices that arent taking off even though they were predicted to be very popular. I personally wont go round convertng all my FLACs to MP3 surround untill there is some prove that this is a very good format.
Since most audio files are ripped from stereo CDs, I suppose surround-sound MP3s aren't really all that useful for most people.
I do have one quatrophonic record lying around somewhere, but since I don't have a record player, or a sound card with a four channel input, it's kind of hard to rip it to a surround sound audio format.
Hopefully, whatever technology people are using for >2 channel audio eventually trickles down to the masses. Maybe itunes or whoever will start selling surround audio files, if they don't already.
I wouldn't think that an MP3 surround format would really impact home theater systems too much. When you get into such high quality systems, lower bit rates on sounds would become very noticeable and therefore less attractive to the sound buff.
Well, I guess the DiVx community will rejoice.
This is like trying to "improve" a car that's 30 years old when instead you could just have a modern car that doesn't need to be improved. Might be a fun hobby, but doesn't make sense as business idea.
Come on! /. only TODAY posted about the free credit report news story that was YESTERDAYS news.
/. is generally 1-3 days late with virtually everything it posts. Sometimes weeks or years late!
In fact,
News... when we get around to saying it's news I guess.
I've ripped a few music/concert DVD-Videos, downmixed to 2-channel Dolby Pro Logic--same thing you get on a 'surround sound' TV program--then encoded as MP3 and saved it in my collection. It works well enough for me. (A program called HeadAC3he will do it. Google it.) It's not real surround sound, but it sounds pretty decent on a surround sound setup. Also sounds cool on headphones.
I have no need for a special codec whose special features aren't supported by any of my hardware or software.
YOU FAIL IT!
Surround sound isn't limited to home theater. Both the SACD and DVA-A support it.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Doesn't the Ogg container already support multiple audio streams? Why a new format when you can put multiple streams in one container?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
You insensitive clod!
Concidering the size of losslessly compressed audio files (flac, shn or even gzip) relative to secondary storage device capacity, the additional space saved by a lossy compression algorithm (ala MP3) is not worth the loss of information.
This codec could be a great alternative to AC3 audio used in DivX and Xvid. Would make the overall file size smaller.
MP4 would have been a better choice, if an MP* algorithm had to be used, but I would have thought that broadcast-quality codecs would have made more sense.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"At the same time, the new format offers complete backward compatibility to any existing mp3 software and hardware devices."
So yes. According to the article at least, this should intermingle freely in the MP3 world. Extremely cool, that.
The ______ Agenda
Does it have ogg support?
Why would I want low bitrates on my surround material? This sounds like about as good of an idea as a surround sound tape deck. Give me high bitrate, high quality, low compression audio if it's going to be surround.
Back when MP3s took off there were a number of independant encoders and decoders being actively developed. That is what helped make MP3 the digital format of choice, the wide choice of tools and players. I have a feeling that most people that hacked out those programs had no idea that they might have to pay pattent royalties on them some day.
With each of these spin off MP3 formats you have one vender for your tools, and usualy just their plugins for players. Most programers know that they will have to deal with the MP3 pattent issues if they even get close to selling an independant tool or player for these formats. So some one that want to just hack on an audo codec for fun and maybe a little profit has no incentive to develop independat software for some one else format.
The various open standards have the appeal of being unencumbered. The popular propritary formats have the appeal of a large user base to distribute to and large media base to access.
Of course, since this is a patented product, they will start charging in about a year, according to TFA. Fuck that, when ogg already does this. Problem is, I don't know how to do it. Once ogg comes of age as a 5.1 channel codec it could really gain so momentum. I would certainly release my songs in multi-channel oggs for the .5% of the population who has surround sound and is into that sort of thing. Eventually, ogg could position itself as the go-to codec for multi-channel sound for both music and movies.
Electric Monkey Pants
That's not the point. The purpose of this is to compress surround sound, which was alerady mixed and mastered with surround in mind. Compressing standard stereo audio with this thing would be kind of silly, just like compressing to mp3 and equalizing the source at the same time would be. I mean this type of things require skills in mastering and the like, and what you'd end up with on your cheap computer speakers might sound better than the original recording, but would sound like shit on better speakers, or just a different setup.
Free Lossless Audio Codec is what you people should be using. Lossless audio, free, and open-source. However, I would convert some of my tracks to MP3 Surround if I had the time just for the heck of it.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
I think it sounds great. It absolutely can't provide for audiophile quality, but it still does wonders on 64-128Kbit/s bitrates. Admit it, that the one and only thing that buried it - was the stupid patenting/licensing scheme. But from a technical point of view, it left OGG/AAC/WMA a step behind.
>Why are they bothering with this?
Because they control mpeg1-layer3 and they want to keep the control of the market. They don't control Ogg Vorbis or WMA. Don't know bout AAC, but I believe they've got their filthy hands in there too.Belief is the currency of delusion.
Why is everyone going on about converting their MP3's to MP3-SURROUND?
Pretty much all MP3s will be in stereo, converting them to a format who's only real purpose is to encode 5.1 sound better is like converting your JPEG collection to BMP to improve their quality.
At any rate transcoding from one lossy music format to another is asking for trouble, even going from 192kbit MP3 to 128kbit AAC sounds nasty.
...why is he a troll?
I have an MP3 CD player in my car that doesn't play OGG/Vorbis or anything new like that. Most car stereo players will only play WMA or MP3... so backward compatable is VERY important for me.
It is just another codec with the name "MP3" slapped on it, because they apparently hold the rights to it. This is marketing. It won't take off, because real MP3 isn't compatible and neither Microsoft nor any label is backing it. Devices on the market at the moment support MP3, WMA and some even OGG.
Ok, let me just say that I am a developer implementing an AAC player so I am familiar with it backwards and forwards. I am not at all familiar with MP3 per se so maybe I don't have my facts straight on MP3 itself... but AAC has some amazing features that MP3 doesn't have. Let's see, it has:
And that's just a few of them. It also has long-term prediction and so many other things. In fact the worst aspect of AAC is that it's very complicated to implement and if you turn on all these features (like long-term prediction, etc) you end up needing a lot of CPU to play it. But that is the right way to design a standard. Mobile phones three years from now are going to have Pentium II class CPUs standard, I would estimate, so we'll be able to use all the fancy features of AAC. And until then, there is AAC low-complexity.
If you want to learn a lot about AAC, check out the Audiocoding website.
Well, it is the same URL you get in public at this page:m p3surro und/downloadpage.html
http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/download/
But I don't see any reason that you couldn't have got it in a Fraunhoffer newsletter as well.
It's a genuine link to the program.
Just dont buy DRM'ed content.
Well, true, right now you don't have to buy DRMed content and there's nothing to stop you from choosing because XP does not have any sort of iron-clad DRM built in. However, once Longhorn comes out with the NGSCB (or whatever they're calling it now), do you think that you will have the option to buy non-DRMed content? Having built in DRM support once the OS becomes dominant is going to quickly mean that any media the RIAA and MPAA release will be required to have it. This is not much of guess, seeing as how they have been pushing for this using every clean or dirty means available to them.
Then what? A consumer backlash is highly unlikely, since, again, most people will hear about this as a 'security feature' and, if you know anyone who isn't tech-saavy in America right now, they care a lot more about keeping things 'safe' and 'secure' than any principles of free access (in the unlikely chance they had even heard an argument for it). So you'll help establish the OS base, and everyone else will help establish the media base, and there goes your choice up in smoke.
Because of licensing. You have to pay a decoder license fee for each copy of the game you sell. So many of them are picking up OGG Vorbis instead. Most importantly, the Unreal Engine and now Doom 3 use them. Many games are based on the Unreal Engine and latest iD engine so it's likely to grow quite a bit.
All things being equal, they'll probably use WMA instead if they want surround music since the license is cheaper, and you don't need one on Windows (it already knows how to play them back).
Well, it's true that mp3pro didn't really catch on due to the heavy competition in the 64kbps arena where it goes up against Ogg Vorbis, AAC (HE) and WMA, and performs rather decently. But the "pro" portion (spectral bitrate replication) lives on as it can be plugged into just about any codec, and is now used in HE-AAC encoders such as Ahead Nero's.
People have been crowing on about the surround music revolution for ever (quadrophonic, ambisonic, DVD-A, etc) and jack and shit has ever some from it. It's always remained firmly in the enthusast domain.
This is even less likely to change given how many peopel listen on portables these days. Those do only 2-channel, so the extra is nothing but a waste of space on the drive.
I mean I love DVD-Audio disks in surround, but then I'm the only one of my friends that has ever heard one, much less owns one.
Especially since OGG Vorbis can support 255 independant channels...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I can't see them moving away form Dolby Digital. It is supported by nearly every reciever out there, is the standard for HDTV, and space isn't an issue on HD-DVD discs. Moving to MP3 would just piss people off. You'd either have to get a new reciever that could handle MP3 deocding, or you'd have to have the HD player recompress it to DD, which would give you all the distortion of BOTH formats and thus totally defeat the purpose.
games and multimedia programmers are using ogg vorbis. because it's more efficient space-wise, sounds better, and it's free.
i don't see anyone using this for games. ever. it doesn't make sense technically and it doesn't make sense financially.
don't use it! Don't even talk about it...Please
Where is Stero Vorbis?
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
How is surround sound in my MP3 going to help me where I listen to my MP3s: on my iPod? Until they come up with a device that gives me four or five ears, I can't see the benefit in using anything besides stereo (or fancy-fied stereo with simulated surround).
Best read in good ol' Monaco 9 point.
Surround sound MP3 will be an utter flop in the consumer market.
.125 inch headphone jacks that simply cannot take advantage of those other audio tracks.
DIVX:
As others have pointed out, this *could* be a potential replacement for surround sound AC3 when ecoding DIVX movies. That being said, AC3 is a damn good format, there had better be serious advantages to make anyone switch.
PORTABLE DEVICES:
iPods and their wannabes all use stereo
Moreover, as these new files have 5 tracks, they will take more processing power and more battery power in order to play a song that will (in the end) still only be in stereo.
AUDIO RIPPING:
The only conceivable use for compressing multi-channel audio for PC use would be to compress DVD-Audio dics or SuperAudio discs. However, both of these formats have copy protection schemes...and (unlike the loveable CD) they have the engineering room to come up with new copy protection schemes.
no such thing. as a few people have already pointed out, it's for converting an ALREADY multichannelled source to .mp3 multichannel. you can't take a two channel .mp3 and magically convert it to 5.1.
Coding improvements being retrofitted to existing technologies isn't new. We have MP3Pro, aacPlus and ATRAC3plus, all of which appear to use Spectral Band Replication from Coding Technologies. aacPlus has become part of MPEG as High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC).
i spent a ton of money ($2300) on a nice kenwood reciever, and 5.1 channel polk audio speakers, for good quality music and movies. Why on earth would i want to degrade my sound quality????
in my opinion, the surround sound modes of modern recievers (pro logic II and CircleSurroundII) already does great implementation of stereo->surround upmixing (with independant selection for movie or music modes on both). i'm sure modern soundcards have the same capabilities (most likely proprietary formats) built in ( i wouldn't know, i use the optical out ->reciever ), so wouldn't they just be over complicating things for the average user?
ex. If you truelly care about surround sound, you get the AC3 source (w/ divx or on dvd in it's natural state) and you enjoy it because you know the difference....and if you just like "oooh it's surround sound", i bet you can't tell the different between pro logic II and DTS, and your only going to make things more complicated, and most likely apply multiple proccessings to the signal, and all your music is going to come out of the subwoofer alone, lol. (sorry, the audiophile in me puked at the sight of "mp3 surround")
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
I glanced through the comments, and was dissapointed to find no actual reviews of mp3 surround. I also was dissapointed that people judged the product without any sort of understanding of what the target audience even is for it. I checked it out, and think the sound quality is good compared to ac3, and the files are much smaller. They are not trying to replace their old mp3 format, they are trying to add to it (hence the compatibility). This will be useful for encoding movies in surround sound, as ac3 takes up a decent amount of space in 6 channels. It will also hopefully spark some innovation in the open source audio compression formats. Surround sound may not be mainstream, but it is good to have if you can use it. And also, a lot of you don't seem to know this, but plenty of good music is available in 5.1 surround sound right now in sacd and dvd-audio. These formats may not take off (they certainly won't replace the audio cd anytime soon) but they are available, not too expensive, and sound great on a good system. I know a lot of slashdotters will be annoyed that it's not open source, but get over it. I know it may be a novel concept, but the people who designed the compression methods need to feed themselves, and the companies that funded the research need to make money.
MP3Pro failed because they didn't release the standard. Only someone who bought a license could encode or decode the bitstream, and guess what, nobody bought a license. If they learned from that mistake, MP3 Surround might take off. If not, well, you know.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
a dvd player, can play DVD's (encrypted) and audio CD's (not encrypted) the backward compatible is that new players, be they software on a PC or hardware in a flash player, can play old files.. but all the new files would be protected.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You don't need a separate format for surround (unless you are itching to waste drive space and need the absolute highest quality possible). I have a great MP3 which is Pro Logic encoded, I hook my computer up to my stereo, which has a Pro Logic decoder, via a standard stereo 3.5mm mini jack -> RCA and my stereo decodes it just fine. Damn nice surround effects at that.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
This technology is of little benefit for encoding video DVD's audio tracks. Standard video DVDs audio is usually encoded via Dolby Digital 5.1. DD 5.1 uses a lossy compression algorithm, further compression won't result in dramatically smaller bit-streams (pigeonhole principle).
Since DD 5.1 uses lossy compression, it is unsuitable for "high-end" purposes. The DVD audio format uses all the video space on the DVD for very high bit-rate (no lossy compression), high resolution, multi-channel audio. A DD 5.1 track is occasionally included for standard DVD player compatiblity.
The nice thing about this new MP3 standard is that it seems perfectly suited for encoding DVD audio tracks. Very handy if you want to take your entire DVD audio collection with you on a portable player.
-ted
Any company that uses a submarine patent is evil in my book. Well it's probably more of a bait and switch, but I already found the links.
The headphones that come with the iPod are made for people with only two ears, so I don't see the point.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
The point is to recover high frequencies stripped of by low bit rate (64kbps) MP3 encoding, based on existing low frequencies and some hints on what is missing. The result is that you can listen to music radio over a 56K line. It's not great, but it will not hurt your ears. Musicmatch radio took a good advantage of this format.
But at higher bit rate high frequences are already encoded and do not have to be recovered. Given that you are not going to encode surround sound at 64kbps, MP3Pro and MP3 surround will never be used together.
That's Zak McKracken, not Ernie, Bob, Phil, or whatever else you may have been thinking. You guys must've been hanging out too close to those phone lines, the 60 cycle hum will get to you eventually. The proof is here: http://c64.users2.50megs.com/zak.htm
If there's a standard DRM method, it's more likely to be used by all providers, instead of going with a proprietary DRM method and making it more likely to reduce the amount platforms on which the DRMed files can be played. Right now the big breakthrough will come from a format that allows DRM on everything, instead of letting a particular vendor who competes and dominates have complete control over a ubiquitous DRM method.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Maybe not the license itself, but the SBR technology did. Ever hear of XM or Sirius?
Have they come down on .avi, RealVideo, quicktime, mp4, ogg, DivX, or any other codec? No. Because that would be fucking stupid. Do you realize that there is surround sound content that is either free, or that people make themselves? They do too.
Just the people who paid for their music.
i own the bigger, better speakers (5.1 channel kenwood with polk audio voice matched speakers) AND a $200 pair of sennheiser headphones. a normal CD doesn't sound "great" to me anymore. :( :( damn the sacd's and dvd-a's
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
I'm talking in the actual theatre here. The movie comes on film, of course. So most of the film is video, just shine a light through it, then through a lense, get a picture. Low tech. Audio is a bit more complecated:
Old analogue audio is literally two squiggly lines on one side of the film. The projector reads them much as a record player reads groves in a record, only it uses an optical senseor to change them into voltage variations. That's not used much anymore, but is still printed on all films as a backup.
Dolby Digital is printed in between the tracking hols (where the gears go to move the film) along the edge. If you look at it under a magnifier you can see a patter of dark and light, with a Dolby mark in the middle. It's the same Dolby Digital as stored on a DVD, just in an optical format (since that's what film is).
Now Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) is another digital format sotred on the film, and the newest one. It is stored on the very outer edge of the film, paste the tracking holes, and is again a light/dark optical digital pattern.
So, what about DTS? Well it was actually the first digital sound in a theatre. However their big mistake was they didn't put it on the film itself. The way it works, is it uses timecode on the film and syncs with a seperate CD player, which outputs a special stream to a DTS decoder for sound.
Now with a DVD, the DTS data is just added as another stream in the VOB files, no problem. However most movies aren't produced for DVD, they are produced for 35mm and later converted to DVD. So that presents a problem for DTS. DD is a shoein, given that it's required on all DVDs, and almost every theatre supports it. SDDS is fairly popular since lots of theares use it and it offers the best wuality. DTS though, that requires a their production and then shipping out DTS CDs. Not many theatres imploement it either, due to the extra equipment required and sync problems.
So THAT'S the reason for DTS being small. It's not disappeared, there are a fair amount of recievers that decode it and, as you noted, a good amount of DVDs have it. However it's still second fiddle to DD, and never will really make the big time.
If something does come to overtake DD, it'll probably be Windows Media Audio. Microsoft is working hard to make it the standard for digital theatre, and may suceede.
Data compression is all about finding redundancy and encoding it more efficiently. In most music you find instruments/voices that are evenly spread over both channels, or with a fixed panning ratio across them. This is redundancy, and any sensible compression algorithm (lossy or not) will try and tackle it. With music compression this happens to be called joint stereo.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
All you people keep talking about other formats supporting more channels and such, but you are missing what this technology actually does.
With formats that simply allow more channels, the size of the file increases linearly compared to the number of channels. With this type of surround encoding, which is probably similar to Dolby Pro Logic II and SRS Circle Surround (matrix surround technologies), you do not have more physical individual channels, but instead, the amount of channels and surround information is encoded into a set of LESS physical channels. For instance, you can get 5.1 channels out of a physically stereo signal. This way, you can also take even advantage of the redundancies of the separate channels and compress the audio even more.
I don't know HOW similar this is to Dolby or SRS's technologies, but, with those, you can pass their encodings through ANY lossy encoder, and still retain a good semblance of the original surround integrity. What also tips me off into thinking this is their mentioning of backwards compatibility. This isn't anything new. MP3s encoded with Circle or with Pro Logic will ALSO playback fine in regular mp3 players, obviously also without the surround part.
So, my question then is, "What does MP3 Surround do (or do better) that Circle or Pro Logic doesn't do?"
If this is basically just Fraunhofer and Thomson's own version of Circle Surround or Pro Logic II is it enough of an increase in quality to make people go and buy a new receiver that supports it over their "old" one that already supports Pro Logic II or Circle Surround?
Wishful thinking here, but maybe on the content creator side, the MP3 Surround CODEC will be cheaper than the Pro Logic II or Circle Surround codecs?
Given all this, I really don't see this catching on.
seen/heard it on this years CeBit. Didn't impress me much because it's just something like Dolby surround Pro Logic because of backward compatibly maintaining. Frauenhofer has a very interesting and innovative sound project though, IOSONO, as reported some time ago here . I was stunned to experience that live.
ext3
Enough said.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Has anyone actually listened to the demo? Their 192 kbps "surround" MP3's show the same kind of ugly distortion as 96 kbps stereo MP3's... I was much more convinced by the 5.1 aacPlus streams that used to be available on Tuner2.com.
It would work just fine if everyone had surround receivers. The problem is the equipment is still prohibitively expensive for the non-enthusiast and there are an overwhelming number of people listening to compressed tunes with iPods now.
I'm reading replies that say "I don't think." And they're right, they haven't thought about it. I do see 5.1+ mp3s can become the next standard. Instead of having stereo headphones, people would buy Surround headphones. Instead of Artists visioning their music within two dimensions they'll have the freedom to really hit their audiences ears spatially. Just as CD is to MP3, DVD is to ...
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
Essentially all new software sold will only install in Trusted Computing mode.
That would be limiting the proprietary publishers' market, as it excludes everybody who bought a computer before Longhorn was first published. People who get a "NGSCB.dll not found" error when installing software will take it back, use the rinse-and-repeat method (exchange opened, allegedly defective software package for the same title until the store runs out of stock of that title) to force the store to refund the money as a gift card, see an ad for free software on one of the remaining non-NGSCB web sites, and pick up the free software such as OpenOffice.org. Some may become fed up enough to switch to GNU/Linux, where none (or virtually none) of the apps require any Treacherous Computing hardware or software.
Microsoft has already announced new E-mail that will only be readable in Trusted Computing mode.
Is this e-mail to be read on business computers or to be read on home computers? If the latter, then ask your meatspace friends to send signed-only mail that can be read outside NGSCB, and don't read trusted spam.
The DRM enforcement and other nasties comes later, after a substantial number of people have new hardware.
The replacement rate has slowed down, as people have begun to recognize that you don't need 3 GHz for word processing and web browsing. Heck, not even two-thirds of desktops and workstations on the Internet run Windows XP yet. Web sites will switch over to NGSCB only when a majority can still view the site. By the time the majority have NGSCB compatible hardware, Linux will probably already be ready for the desktop.
How many people do you know that actually use surround sound?....The ones you do know probably want the best quality sound they can get....not a loosy comp like mp3. Plus most consumers don't even know the difference between compressed and uncompressed. I don't see a consumer use for it. As far as a professional use,....what professional uses compressed files.....other then possibly web transfering, but then in the end it is all uncompressed..for best quality. The only way I can see this have a use is in web streamed surround mp3, but then again not many people have surround sound, and of the ones that do only 5% have it set up properly. (true fact)
I know OGG supports it, but the support seems to be a little suboptimal since it doesn't support higher order channel coupling. WMA does, and does it really well.
However surround music isn't of much intrest to game makers. If they want it to come out other speakers, they'll just specify it like any other 3D sound. Most of a games sounds these days are mono. The game engine or audio card handles the convolution to 3D in realtime in response to the environment.
A Tehnology leap can be successfully achieved if the new technology it tries to replace is 10 cheaper... or 10 times more powerfull or if there is a significant leap of medium/technology (like the CD over tape evolution).
If it's open source it might work (cost/license saving), if the audio quality is so much better than mp3 and makes the files really smaller it might work (performance).
But as many companies are finding out... mp3 was the revolution that they didn't notice till it was too late. Companies tried getting new codecs out to try to debunk mp3, but it was too late. They are now slowly forced to embrace the mp3 tech, but they are still trying to turn the tide. It won't.
mp3 is good enough for most people, it's widely available, and the source codes are out in the wild
I've been looking for wireless surround sound speakers - hardly any around - I only saw one that had the wireless center channel. Anyway, it seems this might help in that development - maybe?
It will phase in over a few years. I think they expect within a year or so to have a Trust chip as default hardware on new motherboards - or even in the CPU itself, Intel Prescott already has inactive embedded Trust circuitry. And even with the replacement rate "slowed down", the vast majority of computers get replaced in any given 3 or 4 year period. The last few percent of old machines would increasingly be pressured to upgrade their obsolete hardware.
I suspect the first round of software will not require Trusted Hardware to install, I think the first round will include "enhancements" and "optional features" that only function on Trusted-enhanced machines.
Another bait-and-trap in the early phase will be FREE software and files that only work on compatible Trusted-enabled machines. And when the kids get a free CD in their cerial box or with their Happy meal, the parents will replace their obsolete machine with a new Compatible machine just to get the bloody free Spongebob Shitpants software to run and the damn Titny Spears music to play.
[98 decible whiney kids voice that can shatter glass, in stereo with two kids:]
Mooooom! We need a new compyooooooooter!
The McSpongeBob disk says we need a new compyooooooooter!!
It works at Billy's house on his compyooooooooter!
Why do we have an old sucky compyooooooooter?! We need a new compyooooooooter!
You can't exactly take the disk back to the store and complain it doesn't work when you got it FREE in a McHappy Meal.
The earlier Slashdot story Former CIA Head Calls for Limiting Access to the Internet is about getting ISPs to make Trusted Computing a mandatory part of terms of service for internet access. It is a documented govenrment initiative - and the good/bad news is the battle over the fact that the government has thus far taken no concrete steps to force it forward through mandatory executive orders or legislation. It's good in that thus far the government has done no more than make plans and make reccomendations that the ISP's plan to make this mandatory, but bad in that the only thing between us and a government pressured rollot is merely the choice of which draft version of policy papers is actually adopted. The Department of Homland Security and the Cyber Security advisors are seriously pressuring for the stronger versions, versions to drive foward the "stalled" Inititative to Secure the National Information Infrastructure.
excludes everybody who bought a computer before Longhorn
I could be mistaken, but I think some limited support will be available in at least some versions of XP. I'm pretty sure Windows Media Player 10 is specifically designed to utilize Trusted hardware. And with Microsoft's current EULA's they can PUSH down absolutely any "security software" they like. If your computer has a Trust chip on the motherboard on in the CPU they can push out the software to activate it. And as I said, some CPUs ALREADY have inactive Trust circuitry in them. I have been unable to acertain for certain if it is possible to activate this circuitry through software, or if it is hard-wired inactive.
Linux will probably already be ready for the desktop
It's hard to pin down Trusted Computing time tables, but Trust deployment exceeding 70% of installed PCs within 5 years is quite possible. As much as I would love to see a Linux revolution on the home desktop, can you seriously project hitting even 15% Linux deployment in the next 5 years? And even then they are ALREADY making Trusted Linux. You will be able to access the Trusted websites and use Trusted files etc on Linux if-and-only-if you are using a Trusted version of a browser and certain Trusted versions of operating system files.
Web sites will switch over to NGSCB only when a majority can still view the site.
Different websites will have different threshholds
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Another bait-and-trap in the early phase will be FREE software and files that only work on compatible Trusted-enabled machines. (Example of a SpongeBob SquarePants CD-ROM game distributed as a premium in a McDonald's Happy Meal)
Point of terminology: If it's free software, then ./configure --without-fritz should do the job. No, your SpongeBob CD would not be free software, as MPAA member Paramount Pictures owns the SpongeBob franchise, and Paramount would probably never agree to publish the game engine as free software.
You can't exactly take the disk back to the store and complain it doesn't work when you got it FREE in a McHappy Meal.
And you can't take it back when it doesn't work on a Mac either.
If your computer has a Trust chip on the motherboard on in the CPU
That's a big if. Which top-selling makes and models have Fritz?
For example DRM music sales sites will be the first to switch over.
And what about DRM-free music sales sites such as eMusic and the indies? What about iTunes Music Store? Will Macs have a Fritz chip as well? If you don't like the RIAA member labels' control over music mindshare, then have indie labels buy a few 3-minute spots on local radio stations and play their music. (Payola is still legal in the United States as long as the advertiser identifies himself.)
Trusted version of a browser
With the full-page Firefox ads in The New York Times and possibly elsewhere, people who make IT decisions for companies will know that Microsoft Internet Explorer is not to be "trusted". Even now, IE on at least one supported Windows operating system has an unpatched remote access hole.
I certainly hope there's a public backlash against Trusted Computing and that it fails, but I think it's very dangerous to relax in some idea that It Can't Happen.
Once it goes beyond the entertainment industry, if people get their Internet access shut off, and then they see that they have to blow $999 plus tax on a new computer in order to get it turned back on, you'll definitely hear about it even on MPAA-member-controlled TV news outlets. But I didn't advocate sitting on one's laurels. We have to think of ways to educate the public in order to create such a backlash.
If IBM sets up an approval authority - and they enforce strict adherence to DRM enforcment to get approval
Is it possible for one company to embrace both selling machines that run GNU/Linux OS and selling digital restrictions management solutions without becoming so schizophrenic that the public slams it as it has slammed Sony? Or which companies were you planning on acting as CAs other than IBM?
major certificate authority
If the Internet disappears in favor of the Treacherynet, and you need VeriSign's approval to get an app into wide use on the Trustnet, then VeriSign could become a target for antitrust litigation, especially after having bought Thawte.
It doesn't actually block viruses, what it does is allow the router (thus the ISP) to check that your hardware is Trusted compliant
That would be useful for a LAN, but there exist easier, less Treacherous ways to stop the inadvertent spread of Windows viruses, such as blocking the main virus-vector ports unless the owner of the account specifically requests otherwise.
For example their firewall can enforce bandwidth caps.
ISPs can shape traffic without having access to my hardware. Cable and DSL hardware already do this.
It also opens up business models for free/reduced cost service by enforcing advertizing.
I choose not to use NetZero. What economic incentive does a broadband provider have to offer only NetZero-class service to residential customers?