Actually, I would have to disagree with you here. The article plainly
states:
-----
"Microsoft, for example, plans to severely limit the quality of music that
can be recorded as an MP3 file.
Why the eagerness to move consumers away from MP3?
All the new music-software formats include technology known as
digital-rights management, which can "lock" copyright-protected songs and
make it harder for consumers to share that music illegally. "
-----
I would definitely call that limiting. It's one thing for MS to employ their
usual practice of trying to push their own standards, but it's a completely
different thing when they are purposely crippling a particular technology.
Couple that with the reasoning behind it; digital rights management - which
has so far been unsuccesful (think liquid audio and sony's mp3 walkmans) and
you have a company who is not *just* trying to add features and push it's
own (WMA) technology but a company who is also trying to decide what you
should and should not be doing with the music on your own computer.
I would add as well that assuming that MP3's are *only* used for illegal
filesharing is pretty narrowminded. I use it to backup tons of original
music I create so that I can fit it onto a cd. A 1.5 gig uncompressed wav
file fits pretty nicely as a 192k mp3 onto a cd.
I can just as easily convert it back to wav when Im ready to splice it up or
edit it with not much lost in the process which is simply not true for
neither Real nor WMA. You gotta admit, MP3 is one helluva convenient format.
There are tons of tools out there for encoding, decoding, converting,
editing, streaming etc. from a myriad of companies whereas there are only a
very small handful of tools available for Real and WMA and mostly from the
companies themselves (more control).
In addition I have a portable MP3 player as well as an MP3/CD hybrid player.
I don't really think the WMA codec is all that great. It's certainly not as
lossless as MP3 and the Real 8 codec is basically ATRAC which is minidisc
and although I'm not ready to argue the point in my personal tests of three
different Minidisc recorders I've found that basically you lose the highest
of the highs and the lowest of the lows.
I know this is a rant and I'm not trying to yell conspiracy here, but it
really does bother me that Microsoft is going to release a new OS knowingly
and purposely limiting a particular technology that is already a worldwide
standard.
Shimone/Justes
http://www.staticbeats.com
Electronic Music For The Mind
----- Original Message -----
From: "EggyToast" <youn0394@umn.edu>
To: <idm@hyperreal.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2001 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: [idm] mp3 competition
quoted 3 lines well they're not limiting, they're just not providing. All the article
> well they're not limiting, they're just not providing. All the article
> really says is that they're going to push for support of their own format
> using their own products, which makes sense. Their products currently
just
quoted 10 lines play back mp3's, which they still will. They're actually adding features,
> play back mp3's, which they still will. They're actually adding features,
> by allowing windows media player to *make* mp3's, but at 56kbps so they
> sound pretty bad.
>
> And, you can still fully customize a Windows install so it only installs
> the basics. I just think it's funny that companies think that people will
> always use a standard that's provided by a big company, instead of the
> standard that's already being used by everyone else. Mac and Linux people
> aren't going to start using WMA any time soon :D
>
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