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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.
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.
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
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.
Perhaps that's the basis of the rumour: Broadcast.com's behaviour. Otherwise it just seems to be too stupid a move and kind of out of character for Yahoo.
-M
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
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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?"
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.
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.
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)
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.
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?
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!
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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!
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?
--
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
Just like you 'spamming' us with your "Get paid to surf" horseshit?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
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.
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.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.
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.
We have yet to see this "OS strength". Seriously, just about every single OS project is not much more then copy of some exisiting , usually commercial, product. How's that for innovation ?
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
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.