http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/players.asp

All right! Windows Media Player for MacOSX is finally out! Thanks for the link!

So what is the exact licensing issue with the empeg and windows media player files? Looks like everyone else can play wma's, including Phatnoise and portable rio products. What are the details that make wma an issue on the empeg?

So what is the exact licensing issue with the empeg and windows media player files?

They are not at liberty to discuss it because it involves private contracts between Microsoft and SonicBlue. However, if you think about it for a moment (think hard now... what is one of the features of the empeg and how software is developed for it...) you could probably figure out what the issues were.

I think the issues have been worked out by now and we'll probably see WMA in the next public beta. That's my guess.

Would that be Open Source? Or to be more precise Linux and GPL?

Do I get an [oreo] now?

Gee, you think?

I wouldn't support a Microsoft protocol if my life depended on it. They'll use empeg (and all other WMA-friendly products) support to make everyone happy about WMA, then change the protocol and close it off to the world so they can sell their own product.. They've done it countless times already.

I just shake my head and groan every time I see people get excited about Yet Another Microsoft Product. If we allow WMA to become popular, the Internet will cease to be an abundant source of music for our Linux boxes and Mac systems and Empegs within 2-3 years.

Which is a moot point, of course, because all of my MP3's are from my own CDs .. although if development of codecs such as MP3 and Ogg are ceased because everyone uses WMA, then it will still hurt the person who uses 100% personally ripped/encoded music on their systems.

.. this all from a guy who lives 5 minutes from Microsoft HQ and has countless good friends who work there..

Anyway, I'm not criticizing the empeg software/hardware people for trying their best to build in WMA support -- It makes no sense to ignore the demands of the public. Empeg on it's own is not going to make of break WMA, and having more support just means more happy customers and more open access to audio file formats, that is until Microsoft decides to make money off of it.

- reid

I was actually hinting towards the pic of the Rio Receiver...

Everything about Microsoft and WMA you've said is true, but moot.

Microsoft can't do a "bait and switch" with WMA on the Empeg because the WMA files that the Empeg will use are not the ones with DRM. They also can't make all existing copies of Windows Media Encoder disappear. No matter what features they added to the software, our existing WMA files will work, and we will be able to continue to use it. The cat is "out of the bag." The *most* they could do would be to keep newer versions of the format away from us, but if the version we have is good enough, who cares?

The only caveat would be if the license with MS had some kind of clause where Microsoft could at some point decide that Empeg no longer has the right to include WMA support in their new software releases. That might suck just a little bit. I don't know if the terms of the license are something Empeg folks could comment on... That knowledge might help us decide if we should use WMA or not.

I still haven't decided if I am going to use WMA or MP3 when I re-encode, but if I decide against WMA, it won't be because of any of my personal grudges against Microsoft. I will gladly put those aside for the purposes of getting higher quality music on my Empeg. As long as we're assured that WMA in its current form will be included with all future Empeg releases, I would feel safe using WMA.

I wasn't talking about them actually making your existing WMA files un-playable, I'm talking about getting support for WMA by being "open" and then closing it off so future releases don't work on your current player. For example, the way Word versions are rarely, if ever, backwards compatable. It's more of a mindshare thing than it is about the actual technology. Even if MS could somehow make WMA playback disappear from my empeg in the middle of the day, who cares? I can just go home and re-encode my own stuff. It's only a concern for stuff you get from friends, or off of the Internet.

I think that MP3 can probably provide the same quality playback that WMA ever will, it's a question of size. Maybe a short ways down the road, WMA files will be half the size of MP3's for the same quality. But as long as you're not out of disk space (and transfer speed is not a concern), who cares? I'll use MP3 until sometime better, open, AND more popular comes along.. or until I need to switch away for practical reasons (ie, disk space). With the cost of hard disks these days, I'm not sure that's ever going to be a factor for me.

Anyway, my main concern is the market share aspect of things, I don't want to see WMA become popular for being open, and then become closed. The result would be EVERYONE using WMA and you can't play it. Bait and switch sucks, even when it's just about market share and not about breaking your existing music.

Hmm, they've got a pic of the rio reciever on the microsoft site?

Doesn't that run the evil linux GPLed operating system that is going to be the ruin of the modern information age?

They can't make all existing copies of windows media encoder disapper.

But they can change things in the latest version of windows so that the old version no longer works.
Then if you want to be using the encoder you'll have to stick with an old version of windows that prevents you from using the latest version of office etc etc.

Annoys me greatly that to run windows on my new athlon PC i have to pay for a new version because the retail win95 version doesn't run on >300Mhz AMD chips, there's a bug in the timer code, and the offical MS fix is "The problem is fixed in Win98". I've already paid them once for windows, why do i have to pay them again?

oakley:

*Nobody* who hasn't been living under a rock considers WMA "open." If I did use WMA, I'd realize the risk that Microsoft could take it away, forcing me to re-rip everything. If the fidelity was good enough at lower bitrates, I'd consider it. If it was gapless, and MP3 couldn't be made gapless, I'd really consider it. If they did take it away, I'd let out an "oh well" and re-rip. I am not under any illusion that it's open, but I am aware that it's a better codec bit for bit.

In all likelihood I won't end up using WMA, but I will consider it.

danthep:

Granted, Microsoft's ownership of the OS gives them the ability to willfully prevent any software from running. We're not going to see an open-sourced WMA encoder in our lifetime. I understand all that. But I would gladly keep a Windows 2000 partition around specifically for encoding if they did, say, eliminate the Empeg's WMA version from Windows 2004 or whatever. If it's a better codec, with higher fidelity at lower bitrates, I'll use it.

not directed at anyone in particular:

The other thing to keep in mind is that MP3 isn't exactly royalty free either, and Fraunhofer has been going after some of the big hitters who use their technology without paying royalties. This hasn't really pinched the MP3-encoding consumer yet, and the cat is probably already out of the bag, but there's no guarantee MP3 will be safe, either. As long as we all have our original source CD's, we're good to go, we can just re-rip to whatever format we need to.

I don't encode WMA files, but I do use WME to make WMV files. So far, I have seen few alternatives out there that make it as easy, and produce as high quality files at low file sizes. I can't stand using quicktime or realplayer, so I don't want to venture into that area and buy expensive programs that I won't know how to use anyway. The fact that WMP will be released for Macs is great for me, because now there's less of an operating system issue to worry about for my friends and I as we put files on our sites (we have an entire performance by our band up on our site, at decent quality for 3 MB files).

honestly, I don't care all that much about the future of these formats. For what I use them for, the present is all I'm concerned about.

FYI, the WMP for MacOS 9 and less is awful, to the point of unusability. The MacOSX version, which I've just downloaded, seems to be much better.