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?"

Comments

No

[pcmanjon]

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.

Re:No

[MrResistor]

My guess is that the question is largely irrelevant, at least from Thomson's point of view. The technology is very useful to Thomson, and it's really just gravy if someone else wants to license it from them (granted, it could be a lot of gravy, but that isn't why they developed it).

You see, Thomson sells stuff under 4 brand names: consumer electronics are sold under Thomson (mainly in Europe) and RCA, and content production products under Technicolor and Grass Valley (a big name in TV production equipment). One of the areas they're particularly strong is Digital Video Servers, most of which are MPEG based. One of the big limitations on what you can do with those servers, especially when you're dealing with HD, is the bandwidth of the storage media. Anything that reduces the amount of bandwidth any given feature requires is good stuff. So this is a very useful technology for Thomson, and of course it will be a must have for anyone wanting to communicate with Thomson/Grass Valley video servers (which would be anyone in professional video production).

It may or may not take off in the consumer market, but rest assured it will do just fine in the pro market.

It could be used in games.

[Knetzar]

To me this codec seems more useful for programmers of games and multimedia applications then for home users.

Screw Potential!

[way2trivial]

I wanna know- does it have DRM?

Re:Screw Potential!

[BrookHarty]

If it does, you can assure I won't be using it. I won't be using longhorn neither.

I will be using Longhorn, DRM wont stop me from using it. I'll just use mp3 with longhorn. Longhorn like XP will tream DRM on DRM'ed media the same now as with 98/2K/XP.

Just dont buy DRM'ed content.

Also, MP3 Surround could take over AC3 tracks on DIVX CD's for space reasons. That might a very useful.

Surround

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Oh Joy.

[ackthpt]

I haven't even ripped the shrinkwrap of my new sound card (top o' the line as of 5 AM, today) and it's time to look for replacements.

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.

Re:Oh Joy.

[Zerbey]

You're obviously listening to the wrong kind of music. Many (too many to list in fact) electronic bands release their music in surround sound.

OK, so you're a Beatles fan and this may not be your thing. I could be wrong of course, I'm a Beatles fan...

Realistically... the average Joe doesn't care

[PornMaster]

"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.

Re:Once again....

[evilviper]

Plus if its not backwards compatible it wont be adopted. Just accept it already.

What evidence do you have of this? MPEG-4 sure isn't backwards compatible. AAC/WMA isn't backwards compatible, yet all of them are catching on.

i dont think its ever going to take over the market in the near future

Splitting infinitives is a crime punishably by a $500 fine, up to 3 days in jail, or both.

MP3 should be left alone

[ChiralSoftware]

Why are they bothering with this? All the other standards that came after MP3 (AAC/Quicktime, Ogg, WMA) learned from MP3 and improved on it significantly. What's the issue with backward compatibility? Every player out there now can already play better formats.

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.

Good idea, bad codec

[jd]

MP3 is dead, according to Netcraft. Ooops, sorry, wrong story. MP3 is an old codec, it's overly lossy, there are better codecs out there, and it's not clear that surroundsound would even be usable in the general case, or whether the distortion you're implicitly adding will become obnoxious noise from the compression effect.

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.

mp3PRO - your opinion

[infofarmer]

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.

Re:MP3 is dead, right?

[bryan986]

Dont advertise links for your referals, slashdot is not the place for that

MP3Pro vs MP3 Surround

[sahonen]

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.

Submarine Patent

[JThundley]

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.

iPod

[Refrag]

The headphones that come with the iPod are made for people with only two ears, so I don't see the point.

Re:MP3 is dead, right?

[Doc Ruby]

How have Thomson's patent claims and licenses affected you, except maybe getting you to buy a fringe player and be unable to share your music with many "less sophisticated" people?

Re:MP3 is dead, right?

[cnsc1rtr]

From my journal...

I see people bitching about free ipod/flatscreen/etc sigs in the comments all the time. If you really want it to go away, sign up using my link. I only need a couple more referrals. ;-) Once I get an ipod, I'll remove the sig.

But seriously, the fact of the matter is that it really does work. I've already had a few people sign up from my sig and from an IRC channel topic with the same thing. I barely even post on slashdot and my IRC channel is always vacant! Yet somehow, it still seems to work. So quit your bitching and just set your prefs to not show sigs if you really can't stand it. It isn't like anyone ever has anything you can't live without in their sig anyway!

I personally found wasting an entire comment to bitch at him more distracting from Slashdot than anyone's sig.