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Yahoo & Broadcast.com Dumping Real Audio for MS
Well this rumor has been floating past my inbox a lot today, so I guess ought to pass it on. I have no proof, but the gist of it is that since Yahoo has acquired Broadcast.com, they have decided to dump Real Audio and replace all sound streams with Windows Media Player. As you can well imagine, this causes all sorts of problems for any alternative OS. This is apparently being kept very hush hush over there too, so keep your eyes open for confirmation.
Well, I like RealPlayer myself, when has it been too much work to delete the links/icons it gives?
and turning off that systray thing is so easy, it's in the preferences
it gives good streaming audio/video, i compressed a 21 minute long song to under 2MB, and it still sounded good enough to me
I see a lot being said about "we can write an open source .ASF player" and "ASF is a documented format" -- but as a reminder:
Why? As many of you remember, the problem wasn't the availability of the player, but the availability of the Sorenson codec used extensively by Mac-centric Quicktime developers. Codecs, and getting ports of these highly proprietary (ie.: considered "trade secrets" oftentimes instead of patented, to avoid having to publish) will be the main issue in viewing Windows Media on other OSs.
Oh, and don't expect these codecs to be particularly cross-platform, either.... Having been involved with the development of one a couple years ago, I can tell you that in the development of these things there's an awful lot of bit-twiddling going on to milk as much out of a particular hardware platform you're designing around as possible -- taking full advantage of writing code heavily optimized for a particular processor in order to achieve the equivalent of decompressing dozens of 320x240 JPEGs per second. Consequently, there's a very real (no pun intended) possibility that a number of these codecs will NEVER fly on a lot of hardware, because the plumbing isn't optimized for them (ever run a FPU benchmark on a RISC box?).
So, the reality is that we may wind up in a world where we do have to run the WMP emulated on x86-based Unix boxes and suffer (or run players remotely over X) elsewhere. It's not pessimism, just a bit of a reality check... personally I just use my wife's Wintel whenever I want to watch video.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
QuickTime for Java is a Java Programming Interface to native QuickTime. This means it can only be used on MacOS and Windows.
The news media reports rumors as rumors all the time. If you don't believe me, watch any of the hundreds of hours devoted each week to covering the 2000 presidential race. (If you can't pry yourself from the monitor, visit the kind of rumormongering journalism: Matt Drudge.)
If a rumor is widespread enough for it to be submitted numerous times to Slashdot, I think they serve a useful purpose by stating this -- as long as they include the caveat that it is a rumor. It's certainly 10 times more useful than Jon Katz taking the current week's hot-button issue, no matter what it is, and turning it into a pity party for misunderstood geeks.
As for picking up the phone and calling Yahoo!, do you really think some random public information droid at the company is going to be honest about a rumored switch to Windows Media Player?
Slashdot: "Hi. Can I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Yahoo?"
Yahoo: "Speaking."
Slashdot: "Have you received secret orders from Redmond that force you to abandon RealPlayer for Windows Media Player?"
Yahoo: "Yes."
Slashdot: "Thanks for letting us know!"
Yahoo: "Call anytime. B-bye."
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
You gan get the Mac version of the Media Player here. Not that anyone in his right mind would do so... :-)
I was a beta tester for Sonic Foundry during their revamp of Acid Pro and Vegas. What was the most requested format for encoding? Mp3. Second? Real Audio. WMA came in a distant third. Why? It's simple. WMA sounds like crap. Anyone with a pair of ears and a fresh Q-tip can tell you that. WMA files are bigger, sound worse, and the encoders are dog slow. Microsoft at it's best.
Works perfectly on Netscape on my x86 Linux. Maybe it's the chair-to-keyboard interface.
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
I am entirely sick of having to put up with that crashing pile of useless trash called "Windows Media Player." Real and Quicktime are practically flawless compared to WiMP (n.b. use of "practically").
An open source reverse engineered client for MSA might be acceptable to some, but what happens when MS changes the protocol with their next release?
:-), surely there are some good unpatented compression techniques we can use to get acceptable performance over 28K modems? (Perhaps it's because so many free software developers typically have much higher bandwidth connections, that we haven't seen free versions of this stuff yet?)
The community responded well, with PNG, when Unisys started enforcing the patent on GIF. Surely we can come up with an open source, open protocol server and client for audio (and perhaps later, video)?
I mean, come on, people. Sending audio over the net is nothing new (I've been doing it since Sparcstation 1 days, using "cat annoying-audio-file.au | rsh othermachine cat >/dev/audio" to bug coworkers
All those workerbees who listen to the radio over the net while at work aren't going to be accepting Linux on the desktop without it.
-- Alastair
why would they do that ?
I have no proof, but the gist of it is that since Yahoo has acquired Broadcast.com, they have decided to dump Real Audio and replace all sound streams with Windows Media Player.
'nuf said...
I have been watching NASA-TV through broadcast.com with realplayer for the past couple days. But yes, the majority of feeds are only available in MS format.
---------------------------------- I like fig newtons...they're tasty
This would be soooo cool. You go to the site and tell it the URL of where the Windoze media player file is, the site retrieves it, converts it on the fly (or store, convert, and then) to RA format and restreams it back to you. Wouldn't even mind watching a few banner ads for this service.
We host three of the local radio station encoders for Broadcast.com. Just recently I noticed that they had replaced the Real Audio encoder with the Windows one.
Sigh...
Aw who cares, I listen to MP3 stations anyway.
Why the heck would I want to? WMA is only a tiny bit smaller than MP3's, and the quality isn't even as good. I'd rather spend my time writing a new backend server for streaming MP3's that actually works, and distributing it cheap.
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Ideally, yes. People may think I'm jumping to conclusions again about the decommoditizing of protocols in the Halloween documents, but whether or not the Halloween docs represent MS's real stand doesn't matter. The idea of decommoditizing protocols basically strikes the bottom-line of MS's survival (at least the way it is). MS is NOT going to start opening API's anytime soon. Partial docs, maybe, like incomplete win32 specs missing all those "undocumented" special features that only MS products get to use. But full docs, not in the forseeable future. Why? because that's how they can keep their monopoly (or at least, advantageous position over competition). They own the platform, and therefore they can argue that they have the right to "reserve" parts of the APIs for "future development and use". And why should they open up their API's just for some weirdos out there who don't use their mainstream OS?
I'm not deliberately starting another MS bashing here, but frankly, it's exactly the case that they DON'T want to open the playground to the alternative kids outside. Doing so will cause them to lose so much power in the market that any sane businessman won't even consider it (and Bill is one heck of a businessman -- ethics aside, he is to be admired for the way he handles business.) Frankly I don't think the DoJ will be able to do much about it either -- structural breakup will at most only do a little. The protocols are what matter -- whether MS is one big giant corporation or a gazillion small companies doesn't matter -- as long as protocols are closed, they're locking out whoever isn't already in the "inner circle" who have access to these protocols. The DoJ may be able to pry open their APIs slightly by company breakup -- but who's to stop them from distributing API's only among a small group of companies? After all, there will be "fair competition" -- albeit only amongst the "inner circle".
If something like this happens, it will be the end of hackerdom the way we know it. Protocols will become things that are accessible only to the elite few. The casual Joe hacker will never be able to afford to pay the access fees -- only proprietary solutions will ever be possible -- and writing drivers for alternative OS's will be no more. And when you're in MS's business, this is exactly what you WANT -- you want to raise yourself to a level above the masses so that they will come to YOU for solutions. And of course, in the meantime, to avoid that pesky DoJ interfering with your cash cow, you make some deals with a few other companies in the name of "innovation" and "leading the future of technology", so that when they point the finger you can retort that there is healthy competition.
I don't know about you, but I want to be able to open up the black box and tinker around inside. I don't want to be voiding my warranty or worse, breaking the law, just to see what's inside my computer. And I don't want to be told, "we're sorry but you can't use such-and-such technology e.g. streaming video because you're using an unsupported OS. Switch to our OS and everything will be flowery and nice." But alas, in this age of corporations, individual freedom is merely an afterthought... or perhaps not even that, just a troublesome issue to be suppressed so that more $$$ can flow.
Sorry for this rant. I love computers and I hate to see the way this technology is heading towards total proprietarization.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
I was resently working for a Web based training company as their recording engineer, but them umm haven't paid us employees since June. :( :)
:)
Anyway, I recorded on a mac using SoundEdit. I hated it, but we couldn't buy new software. I would have loved to used PEAK. After editing all of the files, I converted them to QT3. QT4 broke cue points, or markers. If you can get Media Cleaner Pro it works pretty good for converting audio and video files, and their customer support were really helpful. I got a few beta releases.
Does your company need a recording engineer?
My email is ejarvi@megsinet.net
On my Windows box, whenever given a choice, I always opt for Windows Media over Real. Why? Because the current RealPlayer clients are bloated, clunky, unstable, and slow.
Back in the early days (circa 1995), RealAudio was king, and no one else could even come close. But now that the competition has caught up and overtaken Real (in several ways), having to play any kind of Real media is just a big annoyance to me.
begin 644
Do you use Red Hat or Mandrake? If so, that could be the cause of your "Error 1" problems (something about Red Hat causes it to mess up) You'll have to download a beta of G2 from here to play ra files.
In an era when Real Audio and MP3 streaming media are fairly standard and well supported by most modern browsers across all platforms, why oh why, self limit your audience by moving to Windows Media Player and alienate people? Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit. besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have .wav or .aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
Windows Media Player is, IMO, the best media player available for Windows. Real Player is encrusted in a ton of corporate chrome which constantly flings ads and GUI spam at me.
You can get around this. Set your system clock a few years in the future, open up the player, hit "later", and set your clock back. I know, you shouldn't have to do this, but it works.
Quicktime, quite frankly blowz head. It doesn't even use the video features of today's advanced video cards, like hardware colorspace conversion, secondary surface rendering with overlay and backend hardware scaling. Drag the Quicktime window out to three times its original postage stamp size and it slows to a crawl.
You might want to try a video card that actually has drivers that have some clue how to accelerate QuickTime. Most Mac video cards do this, and it scales up very nicely. I'm sure QuickTime acceleration must exist on the PC.
Until recently Real Player was the same, badly lagging in support of advanced features. It also sometimes inexplicably falls back to non-filtered, non-acceleration video when windows overlay it. It's clunky, and I don't have confidence in it.
The Mac version is even worse. Before it's even done installing it's already broken about 15 Mac standard Mac conventions.
I hate to admit it, but M$ has done good with their media player and they deserve to win. Quicktime would be my first choice if they supported the advanced multimedia features of modern video cards.
I must admit I don't use Windows much, and I never really thought of this issue. Hardware support for QuickTime on the Mac is very good, and I almost always play whatever I happen to be watching at full screen with no problems.
Quicktime looks pretty good (when played at its original size and there's not much motion [wtf is upwith those interlace artifacts in progressive video on QT4??]),
RealPlayer seems to get the same kinds of artifacts. They don't show up when the network is working well, it seems.
but I've not been able to compare it to one of the Windows Media codecs at high bitrates.
QuickTime is really still king of quality. It scales right on up from modem streams to anything you could possably want. You could stream something at HDTV quality over QuickTime if you had the bandwidth.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Sure, there's a Mac client, but no *nix that I'm aware of. I hate it when companies pull out checkbooks and stock options to make upgrades of otherwise dubious merit.
besides, won't it take quite a bit of effort to convert the existing data into the Windows Media format from RA, assuming they don't have .wav or .aiff sources? I'm genuinely curious.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
(doh!) I'm using SGI Irix here at work and haven't really been able to use real player in a long time. Why? Because everyone switched to G2 and there is no player for this platform. I don't understand why there has to be a new version of real files every fucking year and everybody has to upgrade.
So is there really a big difference? I may not be able to play ms formats but I haven't been able to play real either. And their user interface is second only to ICQ in its lameness and ugliness. This is one company I _would_ like to see crushed by the ms onslaught.(/doh!)
By the way, there was a asf or netmeeting client for irix and linux at one time, maybe more will get ported. Unlikely, but I can only hope.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Maybe it's time they got an editor.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Having to pick between Real and Microsoft is like having to decide on your favorite Menendez Brother.
REAL-Slightly better products, but how much longer can they get away with charging $20,000+ for server software which will stream a large number of streams? It's just a matter of time till the server software will drop to the price it should be (under $1000 for unlimited streaming) Real is living on borowed time.
MS-Decent software, and many good features, but it's Microsoft.
Best part was when I ran into Microsoft Netshow developer at a conference and he complained that Microsoft was afraid to make an encoder which would encode MP3's over 128k due to fears from the RIAA.
I hope Napter wins the suit, I despise RIAA even slightly more than Microsoft but not as much as Network Solutions and Etoys.
So many companies to hate, so little time
Regards
Yes, there are apps for WindowsCE 2.11 which allow you to play MP3's and WMA's.
They said.
In 1997.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You silly US-centric computer execs... don't you realize that the growth potential for the internet is hardware and OS agnostic browsing devices with various CPUs, OSs, browsers, and capabilities?
... or are those people the ones leaking the secrets?
why standardize on a format that only supports one platform?
... and why add video when it's not needed. We're still bandwidth poor to the end users. Let's focus on page load times before we start adding video.
for the record. quicktime and real for linux suck. they're virtually orphaned! If I have to view new video clips, I must now run windows in vmware to use windows media player. That's about all I still need windows for!
so, tell me, how will windows media content work over WAP, on cell phones, on realtime OS-based information kiosks, on PDAs, on webTV, over digital cable boxes, on dreamcast, on playstation2?
can't you freakin' lame computer marketing execs see that Windows Media format won't get your content to all of those places.
Everyone and their dog knows that Microsoft has no interest in really supporting any non-MS os. (except to throw off the DOJ - like with Apple)
We've gotta get an opensource video player that's really good, or we're going to be forever writing decoders for MS's ever-changing protocols that aren't supported on anything but windows.
It'll be like the word doc format fiasco all over again!
and to those of you whinig about Slashdot printing rumors, you obviously haven't been around here for long. Slashdot's got a pretty good track record for getting the scoop early.
If your employees are leaking your company's confidential information on slashdot, that's an internal problem, not a slashdot problem.
But of course your network engineers can track down who's accessing slashdot when and cross reference posting times, right?
Well, while I wish this wasn't the case, I think it proves more that RealPlayer is a pretty crummy program. The Linux version is almost completely brain dead and takes up 100% cpu time even on a 8 kbit stream. I haven't dealt with the Windows version, as I don't run Windows.
I'm not sure how MS Media Player (formerly known as Netshow, formerly known as some non-Microsoft product) works in comparison, as I don't run Windows, but people will always go for the solution that works. Yes, it's possible there are other reasons, such as huge discounts for the people serving content or something, but in this case, I think it's more likely the MS player just works better.
To me, this whole situation just proves that the Open Source Community has to create new software around new video compression algorithms, or look at any algorithms already available. I have even thought about researching this field while I'm in college -- unfortunately, Mathematics (and thus the basis for many types of compression) is not my strong suit. I sincerely hope that anyone who has the skills and knowledge available (and who hasn't been unduly tempted by the promise of monetary gains) will put their talents to use in the development of new free software which everyone can use on every platform.
--
Heh. The question is whether Yahoo! is dropping Real Media or not. They don't have much reason to lie to you about that one. Now as to why they're doing it--you can save the conspiracy theory questions for the end of the call. Perhaps you'll get lucky.
Oh, and one thing you might not have noticed: Yahoo! and MSN are direct competitors. Yahoo! has little reason to be doing Microsoft any favors.
First rule: When a company stops giving you a paycheck you stop working for them.
By definition, you're not an employee; you're a volunteer.
As for what streaming media format one should use... that all depends on the party to whom you're streaming. Realplayer may be spyware, but it works just about everywhere. If you want the entire planet to be able to view it, MPEG is the solution. (maybe even AVI.)
i seem to remember in the not long past that real.com was given a right beating over "extrapolating" certain data from there realplayer product to what files had been played etc.. I'm not sure exactly what was sent back to the server but there was no warning was there? There just as bad as MS, for they too got a beating regarding their "windows update" feature in win98.
Slashdot may be biased, but at least it's open about that... You have a right of reply, and the real meat of what I find interesting here is in the discussions anyway. If something in an article is clearly rubbish, this will be pointed out remarkably fast.
I don't think you can ever really escape bias. I haven't seen much truly objective journalism from *any* source. But if there is to be an element of bias, it might as well be in favour of a good cause such as the open source movement.
If you're crazy enough to enter the true information on the download forms, etc., then you're getting exactly what you deserve. Would you give the same information to some nut on the phone? I never put the truth on those types of forms. Do you really think my e-mail address is "foo@bar.com"?
People scream about privacy but then apply zero common sense to protecting it.
It can only be run on Windows, for one thing ...
(And maybe MacOS?)
The proven greater reliability of open-source solutions is also an issue.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I would use QuickTime or MPEG because they are truly cross-platform a/v formats. And FREE. You can serve QuickTime movies (streaming even) for free, hello DARWIN. QuickTime movies are easy to make and they look and sound damn good for the compression you get. Also, if you use QT3, Xanim can play it under Linux/UNIX (not sure about QT4 though... last I checked you couldn't). QuickTime 3 mainly use Sorenson video codec. Apple has an exclusive licensing agreement that prevent Sorenson maker to license it to someone else, making it proprietary. QuickTime 3 use RTSP (RFC 2326) and RTP (RFC 2343) protocols to stream its content. The content of a QuickTime stream and a QuickTime file IS documented and several "open source" implementation exists for both a file opener and an streaming server. But, the video codec used is not documented. That what prevent implementation of player on anything else not blessed by Apple. Perhaps we should investigate on the MPEG-2 side. Why not ?
Hub
Are you new to the web? I can go out and get ten different email addresses at hotmail, yahoo, excite, etc. in about twenty minutes and send ten different convincing messages telling you the sky is falling.
And Slashdot's editors would see the same submission posted 12 different times in rapid succession. If you think it's so easy to get Slashdot to bite on a rumor, do it: Send me a rumor by e-mail from one of the freebie e-mail providers and get Slashdot to report that rumor by the end of the week.
Uh-Oh Mr. Bill! Fact checking is difficult!! I don't know what I'm going to do!
You're missing the point. Calling the flack at Yahoo! who answers the media relations phone isn't going to confirm or deny the rumor. The idea that a single call is going to be useful at all is laughable to anyone who knows anything about newsgathering.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
This has obvious implications for the Linux community. One way to increase the viability of Linux is to create a standard multimedia format, and create a highly scalable media server for Linux. Unfortunately, the only Microsoft can maintain their unfair advantage is to keep the format propietary, so don't expect a standard anytime soon.
This was why the talk about standards from MS regarding AOL and chat was so funny. They only champion standards when they've lost a market and have nothing to loose.
thanks for the info
audio is being done by an intern now. i'm just assembling the packages and making tech rcommendations.
there's a strong push for streaming media which is why i referred to QT4 rather than 3.
It's a lot of work to clean up the spooge and other shit it throws around. Specifically, it installs AIM no matter what you tell it to do. It takes a few minutes to remove it and then edit the registry to remove the damned AIM icon from the player.
The Xing mp3 engine inside realjukebox is the only reason I tolerate it at all. I do wish it would stop scanning the hard drives every time I start it -- it takes too damned long.
Even if we can't reverse engineer it, there's another alternative: A VQF plugin was recently released which simply used Yamaha's Windows .dll via wine, under XMMS. Why not do the same with MSs encoder?
Because that'll only work for GNU/Linux (or maybe *BSD) running on x86 boxen?
What about people running Linux on PPCs or Macs? Or Sun workstations? Or BeOS on some other hardware config.?
Just plugging in to some proprietary system ain't good enough if the proprietary system is only available to plug into on some target platforms. And if you're going to do x86 emulation to run something like Wine on (can Wine run on non-x86 hardware via some emulation layer?) I bet it ain't gonna be fast enough to decode & display streaming video in real time.
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
MAybe if we annoy them with E-Mails asking how to watch the contents available only in WMA they will do something about it.
When you do, remember to stay polite as in the Linux-Advocacy-HOWTO described.
After all, they won't just sit and watch them loose all the users of different platforms than windows. Remember: It worked with fox.com, it'll work again. At least it's worth a try.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
TIME FOR A BOYCOTT!!!
Anyone who listens to Art Bell, PLEASE send LOTS of email and faxes telling him he needs to raise hell about this! He uses the G2 player for all his streaming audio and video for his radio show. Sounds like it's time for competition to Broadcast.com. Someone who will use Real Audio not Winblows garbage!
(www.artbell.com) (for contact information)
The Truth is a Virus!!!
How about the plain fact that lots of people cannot and never will be able to use it? Windows won't even boot on my (Intel) computer, and even if it did, I doubt I'd waste the disk space.
Real's format is much more proprietary that Windows Media. Whereas I can convert a Windows Media video file from ASF to AVI, MPEG, QT, etc., I can't do that with a Real Video file. Why? Because where Windows Media uses publicly-available codecs (MPEG4, MP3, ACELP, Voxware, etc.), Real uses proprietary codecs. That's why you haven't seen a Real format converter since ra2wav...Real Video is proprietary. Real has its advantages, but I think it's squandering them by trying to be both a technology co. and a content co.
You forgot something. They also tell you that realplayer isn't the default for mp3s every time you open it.
So?
Last time i tried to run a qt video on linux, i was told that qt wasn't supported. Oh, wait, that was the sorenson codec. What a huge difference.
as i recall quicktime _shouldnt_ be nagware anymore(only nag-once-ware) Download the latest and try it yourself. If it nags more than once report it as bug.
you seem awfully whiney about getting something for free. Do you really leave a site just because they use quicktime. are you sure you dont stay and read/look at the non quicktime content? be honest.
I'm not too tech savy on this subject, but I do know a lot about most of the formats in question here. "Real" stuff pretty much sucks. Past Microsoft video sucked. Media Player is a vast improvement over their other attempts, but it still lacks a lot of the functionality of QuickTime. QuickTime is the shit. It sucks that it is not readily availible for the Linux crowd. However, the streaming server is. I believe it's even an Open Source project under Darwin.
Also, I have to believe that there is a Linux version of QuickTime in the works. MacOS X will be a UNIX based system. QuickTime will be made for MacOS X. Apple wants QuickTime to be the defacto standard for playing video on your computer. I can't see why they wouldn't port QuickTime to Linux.
I'm sure Sorenson could make a UNIX version of their Codec. It's gotta be possible. I just wish someone would just get off their ass and do it.
--
InstantCool
And in the future:
1) Customer sees link
2) Customer clicks on link
3) Customer sees multimedia clip
4) Customer gets billed for seeing clip that webmaster had to pay a per-use license for making (and broadcasting)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Get the ASF specs here. It seems that Microsoft wants to make ASF an open standard, whatever that means for them: http://www.microsoft.com/asf/standards.htm. At least they're not hiding anything. And as ASF is built on top of MPEG-4, there should be at least some reference C code out there that one can work on. So I can only support the previous poster: Let's make a free client!
The newer versions of Real can serve multiple bitrates off of a single encoder. So in terms of hardware, serving QT requires more of a financial outlay than Real.
Furthermore, Real streams now renegotiate at different bitrates while the stream is being played, rather than continually rebuffering. This is good for users on slow/inconsistent connections.
MS doesn't support, and probably won't support, some critical client platforms that we want to support (i.e. Linux), so we'd rather not use it.
-Alex
If WMA can be cracked, and ASF's are a more open standard than Real, and WM backend is cheaper than Real, then how come you say that WMA is an "unfortunate" part of the future? (other than your ingrained prejudices)
just use mediaplayer and then all your filetypes will be associatd with wmp. woo hoo.
when you first use the quicktime player doesnt it ask if you want to associate the file types w/ qt? If you do a custom install cant you pick and choose the associations? To be honest i dont remember
Plus their set up FORCES you to register the software, and you have spend extra time coming up with a phony name and info,
Ideology is for ideots.
"This may come as a shock to you, but M$ is using a proprietary protocol for their player. It would be *very* difficult (and illegal) to reverse engineer this protocol. Making a client therefore is not an option."
You know what, at this point I think it should be TO HELL with wether it's illegal. Hell M$ is doing so much illegal stuff it's not funny. I think some folks GOOD at reversing should reverse winmedia player figure out the protocol and write a open source version of it (queitly of course). Then spread it AND the source as fast as possible before M$ knows what hit them. Then if M$ changes something in the protocol at least the source will be there for others to hack the new version of the protocol and then re-relase the player. I am begining to think we will have to use some of M$'s own tactics to fight them.
I think it will be fairly obvious not a darn thing is really going to happen to M$ in the outcome of the DOJ trial. I have NO, NONE, ZIP, ZILCH confidence in the U.S. legal system anymore. It has more laws protecting the rights of the accused than the victims anymore. And being WE as the general public are the victims of M$'s law breaking monopoly we basically have NO rights.
The only thing we can do I feel is to fight fire with fire. If M$ can control the protocols used on the internet, that's one less thing that alternative OS's like Linux can use. You ALL have to read and take to heart what is in the Halloween documents. Think about it. This type of move (real audio --> win media player) is jsut one of the steps described.
We have to be millions of voices crying out. If we have to yell and scream. If anyone has influence for making business decisions or have influence over those that do, bring out the monopolistic practices and boycott any company, website or any place of business/e-business that is "buying into" no open standards. Yes, real Player/server may suck, it may be expensive. But if I had to pick the lesser of two evils I would pick Real. At least there is a player for Linux! We can't say the same for M$! And very few are using MP3 or Qt fro streaming anything.
Think long and hard about what is happening and what will/could happen. And mak your own decisions.
(whew!)
Gabriel/TSS!!
"The Truth is a Virus!!"
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Next to the other answers to your posting, I can also add the following on QuickTime: It screws up my path settings under NT and it's unable to smoothly play a 400 x 300 Sorenson MOV on my PII 350 - that's not acceptable, really. Add to that the strange download process where everyone has to get the player online.
i read through some asf (or was it aaf?)docs a few months ago and it was like reading quicktime docs. It seemed to me like a clone of quicktime's file format(except qt uses a sing;le format for authoring and streaming(and QT plays qtvr correctly instead of as a sideways linear movie))
wmp / MS being more open...somebody get out the cluestick. are the MS codecs being licensed to xanim? are thewy sharing the file format? are they opening the server ?
Last February, I became involved with a distance education course taken from Harvad Extension School on "Communications Protocols and Internet Architectures." The course itself was incredibly informative; I learned a lot from it in the time that I devoted to it. (BTW, if anyone wants a good book on protocols, I recommend Tanenbaum's _Computer Networks_)
Now to the meat:
This particular course offered its lectures (which were the bulk of the course) only in streaming video. That was all well and good; I had an ISDN line at the time, and was well able to cope with it. However, it utilized MSFT's proprietary streaming video protocol. Furthermore, the Netscape plugin failed to work to any semblance of perfection, so I was forced to use IE. In my opinion, this was the biggest flaw in the course - especially something aimed at one who will be knowledgeable about computers (it was a graduate level course). The use of Real Player would have made me much more willing to participate in the course, as I had to reboot into an environment that I hated to listen to any lectures with Microsoft's protocol.
What I want to know is this: when will people learn that using proprietary protocols only hurts their customerbase?
-- K
To paraphrase Winston Churchill -- "Real is the worst proprietary multimedia format, except for all the others". For those of us who don't use M$ Windows, I'd rather endure Real than have no links at all. Hmm...is there a QuickTime Player for Linux?
You can always remove the clutter (sure it is annoying. But it annoys you once removing it instead of always seeing it :). And believe it or not: the tray thingie is there for a reason. It runs itself at startup and minimizes the time to load the player (because the main code chunk is already loaded by the tray thingie). You can remove it, too. Simple.
Oh but you are indeed right, real player can be a piece of crap (the linux version is especially buggy). Just wanted to make some things more correct (btw, this post got a +5 score? It sure looks like flamebait, its just it is not linux flamebait but realplayer flamebait. Doh!)
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
So how long do you think it'll be before someone hacks the MS Media Player format and releases it for free? MS doesn't charge for the player... Or, someone could build a media player that's better than MS's player, that runs faster and lighter. That's the real strength of open source, you know... with hundreds of thousands of people working in parallel, a better solution is bound to emerge faster than MS can try to catch up. It took a five years and upwards of a billion dollars for Microsoft to come up with an OS that's even half as stable as Linux, and it's *still* built on that stupid DCOM architecture that's like hanging a sign on your box saying "Infect Me!".
If you don't like it then why not f**k off somewhere else and leave us in peace?
Deleted
What about news you say? News should be text - if you want it read, get a voice synth.
And that first post is right, Real intergrate far too much without asking.
I believe that is just one of their tactics. There are too many to list. M$ uses market share to do most of their work for them. Everyone else has to work twice as hard to even get seen.
TheQ
My comments are the direct effect of your comments or lack there of.
No problem.
:) But I'll just say that with the coming of larger bandwidths than our normal dial-up. Audio Quality will be (or should be) a much higher priority than it is now. What most companies don't realise or even think about is who do they think records commercials, or even music... Professional recording engineers with a great set of ears. (and good equipment)
Yea QT4 encoded with sorensen MPEG codec sounds really good. But the draw back is large file size. I had to Qualcom half-duplex (forgot the exact name of it or was is real-voice), the file sizes were extremely small. A 20MB voice only QT file compressed to around 70Kb, but it sounds like shit.
I could go on a rant, but I won't.
If you need any more advice just give me an email.
MS's stuff seems to be the only viable (as in it works) alternative to Real. And Real pretty much sucks. It's mind-bogglingly failure prone under ANY OS. Given two links to choose from, Real or MS Media, I'll pick MS just cause I have a higher (though certainty is never present) expectation that it will work.
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
Yeah, the G2 Alpha was what I downloaded. I don't think I'll bother with it again, at least until they come out with a new release. Given the stuff I've been hearing about Real's privacy policies (or lack thereof), I'm not terribly eager to be using their software again anyway. And since I don't watch streaming video all that often these days anyway, it's not that high a priority.
It's just that every once in a while, I run across something that looks really cool, and it sucks to not be able to watch it. Oh well. Such is life. :(
I can put an mp3 file up on a web site and be pretty sure that everything from mobile phone browsers to Psions, CE, Palm, Macs, Unix systems and mp3 players will all be able to play the format.
None of the other formats allow this.
Deleted
Realplayer became crap after 5.0. I welcome WMA audio streams because Winamp now supports them and I have a HELL of a lot more control over their playback (the least of which is altering the buffer size).
If Winamp can implement WMA, then there's no reason other, free players can't.
-Lx?
Microsoft is already in anti-trust hot water and is more likely to be force-able to release their APIs.
RealNetworks, on the other hand, while they do support linux, and they are not-Microsoft, is a totally proprietary shop, and not very privacy protective. You can't run their software without poking that fact into their database. I never check the send-me-email box, and yet, they do, telling me that I did, and then they expire the version and off we go to download another RealNetworks trojan horse. Perhaps if they get punished enough in the market, they will in desparation show a greater commitment to open standards.
Audio and video streaming standards should clearly be wide open -- wide open -- and, I think we are closer to getting that from Microsoft than we are from RealNetworks.
Sadly on Windows machines Real Player (and all its derivatives) has slowly but surely been outclassed by Windows Media Player kinda like with Navigator and IE. Too bad there can't be some sort of open source alternative Media Player...or can there (I dunno if/how this could work so I'm asking)?
Since Yahoo created the worlds sweetest browser plug in which coincidentally is Windows-only. It seems that Windows-only solutions are not anathema to Yahoo. I can only hope that enough people hit Broadcast.com from non-Windows boxes for us not to be an acceptable loss (i.e. over 5%).
Bad Command Or File Name
Umm.... Excuse me?
Are you really advocating that we help MS do to RealNetworks what they did to Netscape?
Why do you THINK MS backend software is CHEAPER?
You won't win the respect of your peers. You'll be the laughingstock of the Linux community!
I think the opinion above is, uhm, skewed, delicately speaking. The G2 codec (developed by Dolby Labs and licensed by RealNetworks) is way more efficient than MP3. The end results for audio material you get actually depends alot on experience of the folks using the encoder. As far as quality of streams, their RTSP protocol is a vast improv over PNM they used in 5.0 as well as plain ol' HTTP. I would invite folks to check out music programming at www.wiremusix.com . They also post a Song Of The Day llink at beenz.com music page.
The file you mention for decoding WMA files doesn't actually decode them. It just copies the output that would normally go to your speaker into a file. AFAIK, the actual encoding has not been cracked yet.
In my experience, Windows Media is pretty good. Check out www.twistedtunes.com and check out what kind of quality you can fit into small spaces using it. While MP3 gets about a 500k/min for 22KHz audio, Windows Media gets 200k/min, and the most amazing part is that the quality is really good. Looks like Microsoft was facing some potential competition from the MP3 format and came up with some decent software to counter it. I don't guess they have figured out that you can't compete with an open standard such as MP3 (or an open OS such as Linux, or even an open API such as OpenGL). However Microsoft may try, they can't kill something that's open like they can kill a company.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
I wish I'd seen this discussion sooner, since I recently had a brief email from a Broadcast.com employee about this very matter. Of course, there's no telling whether the employee was either authorized to speak for the company or correctly informed about the situation...
Anyhow, here it is (editied slightly but with the content unchanged). Perhaps this will shed a little light on the validity of the rumors Slashdot reported on.
From: xxxx@broadcast.comTo: [myself]
Subject: RE: BCST0000250179 Broadcast.com Help Submission Form
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 11:36:31 -0600
Good afternoon.
I just found out that we are planning on using both Real and WMP formats in the future. Thanks for listening!
-----Original Message-----
From: [myself]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 2:01 AM
To: xxxx@broadcast.com
Subject: RE: BCST0000250179 Broadcast.com Help Submission Form
Thanks for the reply; sorry to hear about the philosophy books going offline. Whilst I've got your attention, could you tell me whether you plan to offer more selections in RealPlayer format? As a Linux user, I can't hear any WinMP files at all.
This would seem to indicate that they will not be dumping RealAudio altogether. As far as I'm concerned, they should offer their audio in streaming MP3, as there exist quite good players for this format for all (useful) platforms I know of offhand.
It's worth noting that there are already a lot of selections on Broadcast.com that are already available only in WinMP format. Check the AudioBooks section if you don't believe me.
speck
Thanks for your kind words, but I know that page. It will make you download an installer app that by itself will have to get online to get the QuickTime application.
RealAudio and RealVideo streams on Yahoo! and broadcast.com will probably not be missed that much. Even though RealNetworks was getting pretty good at supporting high-bandwidth connections, Windows Media just seemed to run a little better on my system. It loaded faster, and didn't seem as bloated as RealPlayer.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not pro-Microsoft. In fact, I really don't like them at all! It's just that they may have won this time on the RealAudio/RealVideo vs. Windows Media imbroglio. Sometimes I do prefer Windows Media over RealPlayer, and I don't see the entire situation as a total loss for everyone, except those who don't have Windows Media Player.
It's kind of sad to see this, but it's not that bad, in the big scheme of things. There's always mpegs and MP3 audio...
awkwardone
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
I also doubt that Word 2000 documents always work perfectly with Word 97, but I've never used it.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
How many times does this need to happen before people realize that MS never stops trying. MS will ALWAYS win if you rest on your laurels instead of continuing to innovate. They're very good at catch-up, and there's a lot of people out there who would rather argue about their own superiority rather than work to extend it. These are the people like Real or Netscape who get screwed in the end.
Linux is next on Microsoft's list. Be ready.
-Rich
You can get rid of the Quicktime upgrade/buy me! buy me! buy me! screen (at least on a PC, anyway). Simply change the date on your computer to sometime in the future, open the Quicktime Player, decline the upgrade option, close the player, then set your date back to the correct date and you shouldn't ever get the upgrade message ever ever ever again. Anyway, that's what I heard somewhere, and I would never do this myself because it might be illegal or something.
You could stream something at HDTV quality over QuickTime if you had the bandwidth You could stream any of the three formats at any quality with the proper bandwidth.
While I am generaly anti-microsoft and pro anyone else.. due to the fact that the realplay videos are almost always very low resolution in comparison with the ms formats.. If I had to choose I would prefer some one to do something with Quick Time or maybe a pushing java? But that's just me.
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Going somewhere else won't work. Content drives webcasting. People don't tune into something just because they can (maybe they did at first but now they're more specific). Webcasting is not television -- you don't change channels if you can't get something. If a television viewer is a football fan and can't get the game would they switch over to the Animal Channel and watch it instead? Probably not. Webcasting is all about individualized content delivery based on content interest; and not just entertainment, either, there's also business, religious, technical, sociological, psychological, personal finance (etc.), content, not just entertainment, that people want to watch. And if you want something badly enough, you'll jump through hoops to get it (e.g., Star Wars trailer downloads, cable-only television channels, etc.). Otherwise, you obviously don't want it badly enough. Oh, and Quicktime sucks. He he he.
I checked broadband.com and an awful lot of the content I came across seemed to be in MS format. Especially video's.
A lot of places have been dumping Real in favor of MS Windows Media because of disagreements with Real.
ABC last month or so had a story out where they selected MS over Real because of Real's refusal to place their logo less prominently on a site carrying a web video feed of the Drew Carey show.
This is really Microsoft's secret to success. They wait until the competition starts shooting themselves in the foot, and then they move in with very favorable terms.
why doesn't the slashdot community BOYCOTT microsoft, i mean gee, we should, we shouldn't use there products! That'll show em. -1 Sarcasm
If by moving away from the Real Audio format, Yahoo! is no longer supporting non-win-doze machines, then it will in effect be pushing the users of the other machiens away. Perhaps this is intentional, but with O/Ss other than MS eventually becoming more common, it may eventually mean lost market share. THAT will have a greater affect on Yahoo!s future decisions than anything else.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@spam.yahoo.com
I agree than Real Player is now a bloated piece of junk. Why does it have to be >40 megs? The damn thing (at least for Win) has an Internet Explorer engine inside it. It takes 5 minutes to start so it want to load "StartCenter" so that it keeps half of the player always running and thus loading the thing faster when you need it. Window Media Player is much better. That is if you have Windows.
Gawd, I hate Real. Every time you install one of their damn players it feels like you married the bozos. They install a desktop icon, and add themseleves to all your bookmarks and favorites lists, and they add themselves to the NutScrape !@#$% toolbar (like you're going to worship at their web site every ten minutes for the rest of your life) and they add an always running background task to the Windoze SysTray (which is only there to advertise their existence and isn't required for any technical reason other than maybe to spy on you), and then they top it all off by having their player collect information about which streams and MP3s you listen to and report it back to their site.
Scum.
AC
53,000,000.
That's the number of email addresses in their spam list.
Anything that hurts them is good.
(And if you think I care about audio formats, rethink. I don't use RealAudio because they're spammer bastards. Why should I care which proprietary format I can't use people are distributing audio in?)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
> Audio and video streaming standards should clearly be wide open -- wide open -- and, I think
> we are closer to getting that from Microsoft than we are from RealNetworks.
Based on the fact that MS _might_ play nice because of the Antitrust trial?
I agree, Audio and video streaming standards should definitely be wide open. Right now I don't see it coming from either MS or Real - or any other corporation for that matter. Neither MS nor Real is the most sportsmanlike players on the ice.
I'd prefer an Open Standard and the closest to that is coming from the MPEG (both A and V) camp.
-M
Writing a free streaming server for ASF, like Apples free Quicktime server, would be a neat hack. But actual playback would still be impossible until MPEG-4 is released as a standard, and codec software released...
I would love nothing more than to smugly point out the superiority of QuickTime Streaming. But, due to the same kind of corporate shortsightedness that prevents us Mac users from having an up-to-date Java2 VM, there is no QuickTime 4 player for Linux/BSD. ARRRGH!!
OK, vent's over, nothing more to see here. It is oo bad that nobody's snuck the MoviePlayer.app out of Mac OS X DP2 and onto a LinuxPPC box to see if it'll run in binary-compatible mode...(hint-hint)
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
CNN still makes most streams available for Realplayer. If you still need your daily fix of streaming media, you can always visit them. I'm not really much of a fan of streamed media, it's just that I get my news mostly from CNN anyway.
--
It's a shame that Yahoo and Broadcast.com are replacing Real with MS, but frankly, I can't blame them. I worked at a large web site design company this past summer, and it was almost a matter of policy to avoid RealPlayer at all costs.
When you're trying to build a site with seamlessly integrated multimedia, what you want to happen is this:
1) Customer sees link
2) Customer clicks on link
3) Customer sees multimedia clip
What you get with RealPlayer is more like this:
1) Customer sees link
2) Customer clicks on link
3) 8 million pop-up menus: "REGISTER YOUR VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or "DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or "CHECK OUT ALL THE NEW STUFF AT REAL.COM"
This is a Bad Thing for a number of reason:
1) It destroys branding, i.e. the customer thinks "Real.com" instead of "Broadcast.com"
2) Every one of those pop-up menus gives the customer a chance to leave your site -- and go to Real.com instead to register, download, etc.
3) It's a royal pain in the ass.
Until someone comes up with a better solution -- i.e. a widely supported, open standard for streaming media (hopefully without a plug-in) -- Microsoft is the best game in town.
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
That's not a very journalistic approach. Passing rumors about large internet companies does not seem to be the most responsible way to establish credibility or gain influence. I certainly hope this was not just a ploy to use that borg logo again.
.
So it's pretty evident that breaking up Microsoft shouldn't be the DOJ's priority, rather opening up all proprietary standards, protocols, and open-sourcing Windows will be the key to controlling this monopoly.
This way Microsoft will always be forced to be competitive, but at the same time it will be restricted from monopolizing any part of the computer industry and thereby stifling competition. As long as Linux and every other OS can easily play Windows audio/video formats, we will not be threatened by a gradual monopoly from happening, after all the next big thing on the Net will be high-bandwidth audio/video streams and a gradual convergence with TV, radio and telephone.
But one must still appreciate the way Microsoft executes its business strategies.
Based on my own observations, the MPEG and QuickTime 3 formats are the ones that I would use if I was hosting media content.
- -
Here's why I wouldn't pick the other formats...
REAL AUDIO
- The video and audio quality is terrible. Real Networks doesn't write quality playback software (don't know about the Win version but the Mac version is absolute shit). You also have to pay for the software to encode, serve, and decode the content (for the good versions). I've also never had a good experience trying to stream RealAudio content -- strange because streaming QuickTime and MP3 formats work fine.
I just get a funny feeling from RealAudio anyhow -- I avoid at all costs.
MICROSOFT VIDEO PLAYER
- Do I really need to explain this one?
I would use QuickTime or MPEG because they are truly cross-platform a/v formats. And FREE. You can serve QuickTime movies (streaming even) for free, hello DARWIN. QuickTime movies are easy to make and they look and sound damn good for the compression you get. Also, if you use QT3, Xanim can play it under Linux/UNIX (not sure about QT4 though... last I checked you couldn't).
MPEG Video, I'm a bit less familiar with, but from what I've seen it looks almost as good as QuickTime (if you're comparing quality vs file size) and I believe you can play it back on ANY platform.
-----------------------------------------------
It just really disturbs me in general when sites pick formats that are only truly compatible with Windows. With so many excellent cross platform options available, I just don't see why big companies pick these closed formats. Sure, I don't expect them to make a player for every single OS in use, but at least use one of the open formats out there. Then at least we can code our own players.
Do these guys want our business or not?
*sigh*
Ben
Well, actually developing distance learning courses for web delivery.
My employer has not decided on a technical standards set for our audio tracks in courses. I'm advocating Quicktime, which has good Mac support, decent Windows support, and appears to have the streamer ported to Linux (not sure of players since we don't have Linux customers yet). We don't pay a server tax and we get generally the same level of playback on our customer's platforms (90+% Win and ~5% Mac). But we're an NT only ('cept me) shop in house and I fear Real Player of WiMP will be chosen as standard.
I was wondering what people would like to see used in Distance Learning audio and video content.
The post above should have been moderated UP. The WMA format has already been cracked [hunt for unf**k.exe at google]. Reverse engineering for compatibility purposes is legal, and XMMS already has a very strong plugin architecture. Furthermore, WMAs are based on ASFs, which is more of an open standard than real... which has previously been reverse engineered successfully by the winamp-ra plugin people.
.dll via wine, under XMMS. Why not do the same with MSs encoder?
Even if we can't reverse engineer it, there's another alternative: A VQF plugin was recently released which simply used Yamaha's Windows
There's currently a plugin competition over at XMMS.org. Already someone's built an AAC decoder [AAC is semi-MP4]...
The price of Reals backend software right now is extraordinary comapared to Windows Media. Shoutcast can compete on price but not on bandwidth. WMA will be an unfortunate part of the future...
Coders, earn the respect of your peers, the admiration of Linux users everywhere, and some prizes to boot. Write a WMA client for XMMS!
Cmon - we have the technology. Let's do it!
Great! If they go to Windows only format, that leaves open a great niche for an alternative OS minded company to get a strong foot hold. And seeing how open systems generally tend to be better, faster, cheaper, and last longer, in most cases, it seems as though Yahoo! may be helping to feed their destroyers.
Found it yesterday. Seems like it works OK, the quality is a little better that RealAudio (tested on CNN site)
Yes, but last I heard, Microsoft was in a hot dispute with Real, and they were going there own ways. And ofcourse there was the press-release which stated Microsoft would gradually dump Real stock...
Surprisingly, thanks partly to the moderation system, it ends up that (if you read a few of the high-rated comments at least) you get a level of accuracy that often exceeds what you get with the traditional media.
As for credibility and influence -- who said anyone is looking for those?
--
Does one exist? Are there plans to create a player?
I know that Icecast and xmms are a way to do streaming mp3, but what are the legal requirements for these? Can they be used commercially?
am i going to see a "scoop" on Leonardo DiCaprio next? at least he's cuter then Corel's CFO. . .
To be fair (much as I dislike having to say it), the MS player system is probably the most open of
the three main choices (MS, Real & Quicktime).
Real: The codecs and to some extent, the streaming format are very closed. There is source out there for the version 2.0 and 3.0 audio codecs, but the later ones and the video codec seem to be very propietary. Also they don't appear to be able to write very good players - eg the well-known 'video crapping out halfway through streams' problem etc.
The only players out there are ones Real wrote themselves.
Quicktime: More documented. The stream and file structure is well documented, but the codecs aren't. For instance, most of (or a lot of) the HQ streams around seem to use the Sorensen codec, which I believe Apple bought and are keeping very close to their chests.
MS: Seems to me to be the most friendly option to the free software community.. their streaming format doesn't appear to be too hard to reverse engineer (assuming it's not documented anywhere - I haven't checked that out), I remember having a snoop at it when ASF/Media Player was first released. As for codecs - most of the streams appear to use MPEG4 or H323 type compression.
Ie. standard codecs with available source.
They definitely benefit from bumbling competition, just look at Netscape and Real and Apple and OS/2, but it's nuts to say that their products don't get drastically better over time. Just look at IE5, Windows Media Player 6.4, and Win2K.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
As far as I can tell, there is no codec for any real content above G2 or and new Quicktime formats. all of which are popular formats.
Although it does support more standards than the majority of players out there.
Personally, if Apple keeps tweaking their streaming quicktime format, the'll kill MS and Real off quickly. I think that's got the best overall quality of video in my opinion.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
MS: Seems to me to be the most friendly option to the free software community.. their streaming format doesn't appear to be too hard to reverse engineer (assuming it's not documented anywhere - I haven't checked that out)
try it. you'll be surprised.
ASF is documented, but critical details are left out of the documentation. MS is pulling all sorts of shenanigans to make sure no-one implements ASF compatibility (for instance, the documentation available is for ASF version 2, but media player uses version 1 of ASF)
As for codecs - most of the streams appear to use MPEG4
MS has a codec which they call MPEG 4 which is compatible with the current draft standard of the MPEG 4 video stream, but MPEG 4 hasn't been finalized yet. These are not MPEG 4 files and MS is just confusing everybody by implying that they are.
Basically from a technical standpoint you can say anything you want about MS, but ethically they are up to the same old tricks in the streaming media area that they are famous for with OSes and office suites: FUD, embrace and extend, twisting arms with backroom deals, etc.
So what if it's true? They replace one propriatary protocall with another. Real is no more a friend of opensouce than MS is, even if they have released a linux client.
As an editorial enterprise, Slashdot is becoming a joke, agreed.
Slashdot's editors seem to follow one of several well-worn ruts when they write their article headers:
Not surprisingly, the discussion that results fits the mold cast by the editors. Keep up the yellow journalism, editors, and the "Slashdot community" you cultivate won't be worth listening to.Go to www.shoutcast.com, www.mp3.com, all the streams there can be played by xmms.
Stop wasting my bandwidth! command line/lynx/ircII foreva!! :)
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
I know I say this at least once a week, but if the damn server's been open-sourced (sort of) why not the client, too?
--srj/mmv
I must say it's rather interesting to see Linux users happily promoting a proprietary format like Real Audio/Video. I would've figured that there'd be cries of "Open source!" or "Down with Real! Up with " I guess monopolies are okay if they give Linux a player for it?
Their crappy Linux player has been in ALPHA for HOW long now? Didn't they promise to release a Beta G2 player by the end of the year?
No, I haven't forgotten. And I'm sick of RA crashes. If they fail to deliver on that promise I will be quite upset with them.
Windows Media Audio is not the same as MP3, at all. WMA is a completely separate format developed by Microsoft in direct competition to the MPEG formats, specifically MP3.
True, many Windows Media Streams such as ASFs happen to have MP3 as its audio codec, but when a stream is in WMA, it has been proven over and over that Windows Media Audio sounds far better than MP3 when compared at the same bitrates. If you have the newest version of Winamp there is even a WMA compressor plug-in that you can try out to prove it to yourself.
Sorry if I sound too much like a Microsoft advocate on this, but Windows Media really impresses me and I hope it goes open soon.
This sig provides no comical value.
Microsoft is really pushing its format, specifically audio because of its superiority over MP3 and the fact that most audio is stored on expensive flash memory (yes, it's true -- a 64kbps WMA file sounds just as good as a 128kbps MP3). If you don't believe me, check out the Windows Media Site and look at the hardware section.
This sig provides no comical value.
the most interesting part of the post was that they hesitated to post a rumor here on slashdot... isn't that all slashdot is for ;)
I don't see anything wrong with reporting this rumor, but when the summary itself specifically states that it's only a rumor, it's disappointing to see the headline blaring the news as if it were a fact. Slashdot should add the word "rumor" or a question mark to the headline. It's things like this which give rise to so much knee-jerk flaming around here.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I spend a lot of time listening to streaming audio. Now that I have DSL I can turn off broadcast radio forever - yea! In my own casual use I find the real audio client built into spinner.com's listener to be superb. It hardly ever gets net congested and the reproduction quality is great. Especially in the bass tones. I belive that 56k MP3s are of far worse quality and Windows Media player is a close second.
Now as far as video stream with audio, the windows media player always performs the best for me. Check out www.sagabegins.com to hear a great Weird Al video in 3 different formats. WMP beats them all hands down.
I believe that the adoption of the WMP will be a blow to free OSes. Im not sure if it is even worthwhile for a free software group to try to make a free WMP. I imagine that microsoft will repeatedly change the format rapidly enough that no one but microsoft can keep up with the changes.
Face it, business decisions are made for business reasons. For broadcast.com to offer both formats it takes twice the diskspace and twice the time to convert. This essentially translates to twice the cost.
The number of *nix users is commercially small compared with those using windows. The only reason Mac clients exist is because a lot of schools and artist-types use Macs, IMNSHO. Would you spend twice what you had to just to reach a few percent of the market place?
It annoys me because all of the cool stuff on the web grew up under Unix years before M$ realized the importance of TCP/IP and now they are usurping everything.
The real question is, since it seems everyone thinks RealAudio is crappy technology, how many M$ products are actually better than the competition (ignoring the bloated and buggy OS they sell)?
Also, do they succeed because they can offer the best and brightest a nice chunk of change after they've sacrificed their youth?
And would breaking them up do any good? Or should they just be forced to make regular API/file format releases so that others can at least adhere to their "standards"?
I personally think they should have full API/format releases *before* they release the product. Let M$ make all the money they want, just don't lock the gate to the playground with the alternative kids outside.
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
A couple years ago, I remember it working relatively well even with video on my old 133. You'd think they'd at least maintain the same level of stability, much less make improvements. Don't you just hate when software gets worse with each new version?
For thoese of you who think it is not a big deal, your wrong. Broadcast.com is one of the few places were you can find non-profit radio programming. These stations have *no* money to buy there own T3s and deserve to reach the most people. Once Yahoo makes this switch, we will lose this content.
If MS made Media Player on all platforms, it would not be a big deal. The fact that MS has claimed that the streaming feature in it's Media Player would be open-protcal for years and still has yet to show some docs means something. The fact that we will be losing a lot of good, imporant content means something. Maybe this will encourage someone to reverse the Media Player and come out with a Open player, but I don't think so. We need to prevent MS from claiming the entire streaming Media world, becuase that makes it that much easyer for the rest of the parts of the internet. Don't take this lightly.
Spell Check broke, sorry.
Quicktime, quite frankly blowz head. It doesn't even use the video features of today's advanced video cards, like hardware colorspace conversion, secondary surface rendering with overlay and backend hardware scaling. Drag the Quicktime window out to three times its original postage stamp size and it slows to a crawl.
Until recently Real Player was the same, badly lagging in support of advanced features. It also sometimes inexplicably falls back to non-filtered, non-acceleration video when windows overlay it. It's clunky, and I don't have confidence in it.
Windows Media Player on the other hand is unobtrusive and just does what you ask it to do: play the fucking video and shaddup. It also makes use of any multimedia acceleration features your DirectDraw driver can support, including video filtering, scaling, and color space conversion. All without ads. And I've run it for six hours at a time watching streaming MPEG4 NASA TV at 300k and had no problems.
WMP is multimedia done right. It works awesome for me and the video quality is better than Real. Catch a 300k Real stream from pseudo.com, and then check out the 300k MPEG4 NASA TV stream from broadcast.com.
I hate to admit it, but M$ has done good with their media player and they deserve to win. Quicktime would be my first choice if they supported the advanced multimedia features of modern video cards. Quicktime looks pretty good (when played at its original size and there's not much motion [wtf is upwith those interlace artifacts in progressive video on QT4??]), but I've not been able to compare it to one of the Windows Media codecs at high bitrates.
In summary: Real Player truly sux, Quicktime sucks somewhat less, but Media Player is all I ever wanted feature wise.
For crying out loud people.. get this through your skull, 'kay?
/. is a bit like complaining about rumors being spread on IRC. If you don't like what Slashdot posts, stop reading it.
Slashdot is not CNN. It is not Time, nor is it ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the BBC, or even the Weather channel.
Slashdot is NOT NEWS in the conventional sense. It is a site run by a bunch of guys who post stuff they find interesting. Complaining about rumors being spread on
Slashdot is not mass media and has no "journalistic obligations" whatsoever. Deal with it.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
If i'm correct, there is a Java version of Quicktime...
It could be some kind of a solution...
Has anybody tried it?
QuickTime streaming is standards-based and the server is open source. The problem is the codec is proprietary. There are other companies supporting this standard. Information is available at http://www.streamingserver.org. A Linux RTP/RTSP client using a non-proprietary codec, such as H.263, could be a good solution. Does anyone have any ideas?
Given what a royal cock-up Netscape's "support" for UNIX platforms (at least Linux and IRIX) has been, using non-Windows machines for Web browsing is looking like less of an option every day. Unless you don't mind your browser crashing lots.
I've recently taken to using NT machines at university for browsing the Web, and just using MindTerm (a pure Java SSH client) to log in and check my mail. And I'm no Microsoft zealot.
Aside: anyone know whether there's a Windows Media player for MacOS?