M$ previews Windows Media for DVD players

[gNOMEintheRedHat]

www.eet.com/story/OEG20011211S0054

NEW YORK — Microsoft Corp. previewed its next-generation Windows Media technology at the Internet World conference Tuesday (Dec. 11) and said leading chip makers for DVD players will support the technology in systems to be shipped next year.

Microsoft detailed the Corona version of Windows Media for the first time at the conference here. Set for release next year, Corona includes the Windows Media Professional codec, which was demonstrated playing a 24-bit, 5.1-channel surround sound file over an Internet Protocol connection at a 96-kHz sampling rate. Corona also sports a new feature called Fast Stream that eliminates the buffering of streaming audio and video files on a broadband connection, giving users an "instant on" experience and enabling them effectively to channel surf between Web streams.

A new video codec will boost performance 20 percent over current-generation video codecs, and will enable the playback of high-definition 720 x 1,280 progressive scan video at 24 frames per second, said Will Poole, vice president of the Windows Digital Media Division of Microsoft. Using Windows Media's 4-to-1 compression ratio advantage over MPEG-2, "studios could put all the Godfather movies or an entire musician's discography on a single CD," said Poole.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: gnomeintheredhat on 2001-12-12 06:27:23 ]</font>

[JHebert]

So what do you all think?

Microsoft is once again abusing their monopoly power in operating systems to extend themselves into and dominate yet another market, in consumer electronics and media distribution?

Or

This is a mega cool feature and I can't wait to buy another new DVD player even though I just bought one so that I can ditch my open standard vcd/svcd and play those great M$ proprietary closed formats?

Thanks DOJ for giving M$ that "get out of jail free" card!