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Microsoft Deal Limits Verizon MP3 Phones
An anonymous reader writes "PCSIntel is reporting that the new VCast music system by Verizon may not be quite as positive as users were led to believe. Claims were made that the new software for this service would disable the ability to play MP3s on these phones. It turns out that the ability to play MP3s still exists but only because the software first converts it to the WMA format. This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s."
Every other country in the world has sane mobile phone pricing and services. Why not the US?
Converting MP3 to WMA does not mean that these phones are capable of playing MP3s. This is just like Sony's portable audio devices only playing ATRAC (yes I know they've fixed this now).
"Yet again Micro$oft fucks the computing public."
More like the public fucks itself. This wouldn't even be an issue unless everyone in the US accepted the thought of phones as something the carrier provides.
Microsoft is indeed evil for asking, but this is as stupid as allowing your ISP to force you to use computers and software they provide, yet no one seems to be bothered enough to do something about it. You get what you deserve.
My Sig: SEGV
This conversion, however, is not available for phones on Mac or Linux, leaving these customers unable to play MP3s.
Mac and Linux users can convert mp3's to WMA on their computer first before playing it on their phone, not? But I suppose Mac and Linux users will make other choices in general, and thus won't buy this phone.
I would think that just converting mp3 into wma is a generally bad idea, since the sound is guaranteed only to get worse, as things most often do when converting from a lossy compression to another. make world
Even if you didn't have to buy a new phone when switching carriers they'd still probably cripple it with their own software version as soon as you connect to their network whether you want it or not. If it isn't an automatic upload then they'll simply say you can't use that phone on the network until you take it in and have the firmware updated to an authorized version to prevent "hacking" or some other nonsense argument. In the end we all know it's really about profit more than anything.
(Real flamebait there, stating the obvious about a company most people find either loathesome or embarrassing. To say nothing of the readership here. That'll teach him not to start the thread with a tired joke.)
Be thankful the DRM effort is spearheaded by folks who haven't a clue how creepy their dystopian jargon sounds to everyday people. Biggest installed userbase for anything since the internal combustion engine, and they haven't figured out that consumers who have the time and patience for this will devote them to something else.
License migration, for Christ's sake. I want to listen to music on my cellphone.
That MS even cares about your phone demonstrates that their efforts remain comfortably misdirected. Surely the next step in this terrifying slippery slope is to crack down on the games we have installed on our iPods.
Heavens.
Or maybe I'm just one of those consumers directing his time and patience to something else, and this trojan horse will live to bite us all on the ass - just in time, I'm sure, for no one to remember what cellphones and iPods were.
Some of the extra features are handy at times. Text messaging isn't fast but it's convenient here and there. Camera is a cute toy but I never use mine.
I wonder how many consumers really want to use their phone as an mp3 player anyway? Or watching TV? Not me, but that's not necessarily reflective of the wider market.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Well, yeah, but it's equally relevant that there's no DRM with MP3s. Microsoft and Verizon are Big Businesses (TM). They can't afford to tick off the Powers That Be (TM).
It's sad that the music industry didn't get behind digital delivery before things got out of hand. DRM makes a certain amount of sense ... but it's way too late. If they had made their catalogs available digitally pre-Napster, consumers might have become accustomed to it and they might have gotten it to work, but at that point they were so consumed with protecting their CD margins that their window of opportunity closed.
Now they're screwed, everything's free if you know what you're doing, and we all get to suffer their litigation. Just another example of corporate greed doing no one any good, including the corporation itself.
Bring on the apologists!
Why call it an MP3 Phone, if it doesn't play MP3s?
... It's still food, just not the food you wanted.
That's like KFC advertising Big Macs but giving you a piece of chicken...
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
I just dont get it, I've been playing mp3's and transferring them between my computer and my phone via usb for 18 months....the answer is a Palm treo 600. have a nice day :)
Dean
I don't know if it has to do with audiophile quality as much as for people who store music at home in FLAC, maintaing a seperate MP3 (or whatever) collection for portables is a pain in the ass. With storage as cheap as it is, is it really that crazy to say "I just want to go with FLAC on everything"? Same thing with this phone really. Converting to WMA is just a pain in the ass. I first thought they had a good idea with this (that is, if you like the idea of a MP3 plyaer/phone combo, which many here do not) but adding the WMA conversion makes it just another product to sigh at.
About two months ago I was deciding whether or not to get a RAZR or an E815 through Verizon, as I didn't have much of a choice in carriers. It took a short while, but I eventually decided to go with the E815, because it was more easily known to be a moddable phone. Unlocked using relatively easy instructions found online, I was able to get it working to play MP3's just fine as ringtones or whatever. Also enabled basic OBEX and DUN over Bluetooth, though none of the 'push' features. Once unlocked, the phone becomes a lot more useful to people with non-Windows systems, though you do need a USB cable and some special software (that isn't difficult to find) to hex-edit the phone in order to free things up.
I figure this kind of modification is perfectly legitimate, as it doesn't take anything away from Verizon that they're obligated to. Any time I spend on the net with the phone uses minutes, and any feature I unlocked simply enables me to use the handset with -my- other electronics. I do wish Verizon would stop this crap and start offering services like the rest of the world can get them, but so long as they'll lock things down, we'll try and unlock them.
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