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RealNetworks buys Xing

Posted by Hemos on from the time-to-rock-and-roll dept.

Keith Russell writes "Caught this on ZDNet. RealNetworks is buying the Xing Corp. for ~$75M in stock. Looks like Real and IBM are gearing up for a fight with Microsoft over digital audio. " True-combine this with the IBM partnership and Microsoft's announcements about digital vidoe-things are about to get messy.

4 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. The winner is Linux by heroine · · Score: 2

    At least on May 14th, when Broadcast 2000 comes out, they won't be looking to real or MS for digital audio.

  2. What might the future hold... by Stalke · · Score: 2

    What real/ibm now need is some exclusive content to back things up. Unfortunately Yahoo/Broadcast.com supports both windows media and real media and I wouldn't be surprised if nbc starts to put more web content out in the future and I wouldn't be surprised if it is only available for windows media (due to the whole msnbc thing).

    So where does this leave real/ibm. First of all, they can put add a bit more weight by working more closely with AOL/Netscape/Sun since their also countering the small and squishy company. Second, they need content, and lots of it. Ibm/real seem to have a good head start with audio but video is where the future is. Get working with Apple, Fox and some of the cable networks. A good pilot would be to test out weekly boardcasts of South Part/ Simpsons/ etc. There is already a market there that can be used. And from there, who knows what can happen..

    --
    -?-
  3. It's called MPEG, by Breace · · Score: 2

    and there are _several_ free MPEG codecs available.

    MPEG-1 (ISO-11172) and MPEG-2 (ISO-13818) which cover audio, video and system streams are open standards, and for most parts of it you don't have to pay royalties if you distribute an implementation. (The exception as I understand being MP-3 which really is MPEG-1 Layer III)

    Xing got 'big' by building MPEG codecs.
    Their codecs used to be only partially complaint with the specs, they lacked some major parts in the decode engine which made it (in my opinion) a useless product. Dunno what the current status is, because I think Xing was sorta blown away by far better products,- I lost interest...

    (And YES, the ActiveMovie MPEG software decode is pretty decent,- to bad they don't release source. :o))

    Breace

  4. IBM bad at consumer products by Cassius · · Score: 3

    With Real in the partnership, maybe they have a chance, but IBM has never been very good at marketing to consumers. In fact, they suck at it.

    Microsoft also has a *bit* of an advantage in the consumer OS market, which is the platform all this stuff depends on.