VOOM to employ Windows Media 9
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Well right now we can't even get a 2 hour movie to play in HD without pixels and dropouts and they think they can get 1080p smoothly?
Sh*t!
I don't care if M$ can do 20,000p I'd rather have anything but these people muscling into my living room. I'm never had a console crash until M$ made one, and I'll bet my first major crash on HD will be the M$ codec down the road.
After this gets in place just watch the anti-competitor contract garbarge take place. M$ can dominate the HD codec market in 5 years and every STB will crash for no reason left and right.
Sh*t!
I don't care if M$ can do 20,000p I'd rather have anything but these people muscling into my living room. I'm never had a console crash until M$ made one, and I'll bet my first major crash on HD will be the M$ codec down the road.
After this gets in place just watch the anti-competitor contract garbarge take place. M$ can dominate the HD codec market in 5 years and every STB will crash for no reason left and right.
I have been wondering, "what's wrong with this guy?" I finally figured it out. He's only 15. Back before you were born there was this thing called the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is considered the most important console in videogame history. It crashed all the time. There is a well know fix for this problem called the "Nintendo Blo&job." I know that you might not understand that word, but your parents will tell you what it means when your older. For the record, your problems with game crashes are the developers part. Go to Bioware's forums and read about KOTOR's crash problems. BTW, why did you buy the XBOX if you hate MS so much. Why didn't you just stick with the PS2 and play Tony Hawk with your friends?red ufo said:
I smell a penguin...LOL
I fully agree that MS puts out buggy software and then patches the Hell out it once the bugs are reported. However, the WMV9 is out now, and I must admit it kicks a**. The compression is just amazing.
Last year, for personal use, I thought the DIVX CODEC was viable, but it's a pain in the ass to use compare to MS's Media Encoder.
I fully agree that MS puts out buggy software and then patches the Hell out it once the bugs are reported. However, the WMV9 is out now, and I must admit it kicks a**. The compression is just amazing.
Last year, for personal use, I thought the DIVX CODEC was viable, but it's a pain in the ass to use compare to MS's Media Encoder.
Regardless of your feelings about MS... There is currently no better alternative for encoding HD than that offered by WM9... and with the industry support ramping up to this emerging technology, be prepared that WM9 could become the defacto standard for HD encoding.
The WM-9 system is gaining momentum. Part of the reason is that Microsoft has made the licensing of the technology cheaper than any of the other MPEGs:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/licensing.aspx
(look at the charts of charges towards the bottom).
Also, you do not have to have your software/hardware written/designed by Microsoft. You can license the standard and write/design your own solution, you just have to pay the licensing fees on all the copies/devices you sell. Note that these fees are *MUCH* less than even MPEG-2. Also note that the license go through 2012, and auto renews to 2017 without a price increase.
Essentially it looks like Microsoft could really care less about trying to make $$ off of this. Really if you have 40 billion sitting in the bank, trying to get an extra million or two from licensing fees does not make as much sense as trying to get your software adpoted as a standard.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/licensing.aspx
(look at the charts of charges towards the bottom).
Also, you do not have to have your software/hardware written/designed by Microsoft. You can license the standard and write/design your own solution, you just have to pay the licensing fees on all the copies/devices you sell. Note that these fees are *MUCH* less than even MPEG-2. Also note that the license go through 2012, and auto renews to 2017 without a price increase.
Essentially it looks like Microsoft could really care less about trying to make $$ off of this. Really if you have 40 billion sitting in the bank, trying to get an extra million or two from licensing fees does not make as much sense as trying to get your software adpoted as a standard.
mike123abc said:
This is exactly the problem. Nobody but a monopoly could afford to develop and give this away. Once all vestiges of competition are gone and everyone has adopted their standard (according to your information around 2012), MS will be the only player in town. Then, when the next gen of HD comes out, we will all pay (for decades) because of the lack of competition.
I always thought the MS monopoly will end once their embedded OS is running our home appliances. Specifically refridgerators. The world will finally decide MS crap is not acceptable when they reach for a beer and find the fridge is "blue screened".
soledade said:
As someone who works in the IT field with windows, *nix and Mac systems I can tell you that 2000 & XP don't blue-screen any more often than linux or Mac systems go into kernel panic. Most blue-screens on windows PCs are related to hardware or device driver problems. A properly configured & maintained system should not ever have this problem... If you are still using older versions of windows or basing your opinions on them, then your information is out of date.
Embedded XP and CE are very different than a PC OS. A PCs OS has to support all kinds of hardware & software and has to be able to tolerate user stupidity as well. And unlike a PC a embedded system doesn't use a hard drive for it OS, the OS is stored in Memory that boots much faster and is not continuously being written to like a hard drive. An embedded system can be very refined, very efficient and since there are no modifications made by the end user, they are much more stable than PCs (think XBOX, PS2). That is why many banks ATMs and many gas pumps are running embedded windows CE or XP or some other OS's like linux/unix, with very little problems. An STB is the same... A vendor can license the tech from MS and decide exactly what the system does, including developing the device drivers necessary. The only components of the OS that are included are the ones that the hardware vendor decides on. If the hardware vendor does a good job it doesn't matter what OS it's running on, The device will function as it was intended.
BTW... I haven't specifically checked into this, but I'm willing to bet these Moto STBs that Voom uses, that everyone complains about how they freeze up are running a version of linux. Does that mean linux is bad? No... it just means that Motorola needs to get their act together.
txdude said:
I work in the industry too. I run Mac OS X 10.3.3 and XP on two machines. My XP machine blue screens about once every two months. No big deal. XP does have a "half life" since installation. As time progresses from the install the system gets slower and slower, more and more cluttered. Also XP is better than anything else they have done but it is still a mess of code and especially user interfaces from the past OSes. What windows needs more than anything else is a usability expert. Everything in windows takes too many steps, is burried in too many inconsistent menus, requires too much user input.
OS X has never kernel paniced for me although they have a much tighter control over drivers than MS does (and a much smaller variety of drivers to deal with after all the hardware choice is very limited).
I make a living doing embedded work. MS's embedded alternatives are horrendous. They take way too many resources and are really not designed to run on anything simple (like Nucleus, or other ARM OSs, try running anything by MS on a PIC). All products have a downside as you point out including Linux.
I can think of very few product categories where given a choice I would go for the one made by MS. In my opinion there are better choices in almost every product category. To get back on topic maybe the WM codec would be one of those products.
Enough about MS. Call me when your beer's warm.
Comparing a compression standard to an operating system is just idle chatter. The compression standard would be a mathematical procedure that you do not have to use any Microsoft code to implement. To say that you do not want to use this new mathematical proceedure because your unrelated in any way computer in the next room might need to reboot is just inane.
Microsoft has spent who knows how much $$ on the development of the compression algorithms, and now is pretty much donating them to the industry. The amount they charge pretty much just would cover the paper work and testing for compliance.
Yes they used cash from their desktop monopoly to develop this. But I do not see one single way this is a bad thing. They are not charging mountains of cash to use it, instead they are practically giving it away. It would be like saying we cannot use the transistor/ICs/fiber optics because AT&T developed them using cash from their phone monopoly.
I do not see how they will have an advantage to dominate the industry, the only advantage I see is that they temporarily have a head start on programs in the OS that can read/code the new compression code, in the months/years it takes for the industry to start really using the compression everyone else will have it too.
Microsoft has spent who knows how much $$ on the development of the compression algorithms, and now is pretty much donating them to the industry. The amount they charge pretty much just would cover the paper work and testing for compliance.
Yes they used cash from their desktop monopoly to develop this. But I do not see one single way this is a bad thing. They are not charging mountains of cash to use it, instead they are practically giving it away. It would be like saying we cannot use the transistor/ICs/fiber optics because AT&T developed them using cash from their phone monopoly.
I do not see how they will have an advantage to dominate the industry, the only advantage I see is that they temporarily have a head start on programs in the OS that can read/code the new compression code, in the months/years it takes for the industry to start really using the compression everyone else will have it too.
M$ don't do something for nothing. Ever see the price of there software. Sure its cheap now to obtain dominance. They the squeeze comes into play. They are not doing this out of the goodness of there heart. They always see a big pay off down the road somewhere.
oddwunn,
Thank you very much for your update on WMV9! It is always nice to hear the first-hand information.
Could you tell us more about your WMV9 evaluation process. What kind of displays/projectors are you using? Did you have a chance to compare WMV9 back-to-back with MPEG4 or with MPEG2? Any other details would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!
Thank you very much for your update on WMV9! It is always nice to hear the first-hand information.
Could you tell us more about your WMV9 evaluation process. What kind of displays/projectors are you using? Did you have a chance to compare WMV9 back-to-back with MPEG4 or with MPEG2? Any other details would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!
As someone else noted, there's no price increase coming for more than another decade. By that time, there will be better codecs available.
You make it sound like Microsoft is going to put the developers of competing codecs out of business, then jack up the price. This is ludicrous, because companies don't live off their codec licensing; there aren't any successful companies that exist just to produce codecs. The patent holders who share royalties from MPEG4 Part10 (H.264)--the primary competition to WM9--include: Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Télécom, Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC).
Research institutions, telecommunications, and electronics vendors continually refine their own technology for internal use. They don't develop the technology for the purpose of selling it to someone else. They license it in exchange for royalties, when someone else finds an effective way to use it, but this is not the reason they invest in or develop the technology.
The obvious benefit of WM9 is not profits--because it won't make them rich, even if everyone in the world were to use it--but mindshare. Some of Microsoft's technology is used in previous codecs, like MPEG-4 Part10, but they don't get any credit or mindshare for it (aside from a little money), because they are only one of many contributors. You don't, for example, see any indication on Apple's Quicktime (MPEG-4) web site that Microsoft helped to develop the technology. Most Apple customers have no idea.
However, if every HD-DVD player and future cell phone is said to specifically use Microsoft VC9 technology, possibly (but not necessarily) even with a logo on the box, that furthers the public's view of Microsoft as a technology leader and innovator. When more people view Microsoft as an innovator, and are pleased with the performance they find with products that incorporate VC9, they are more likely to buy other products with the company's technology (X-box, Windows, etc), which actually generate profits.
Hi Ilya,
Unfortunately, though I am not officially under NDA, MS has requested that I keep things pretty quiet, so I can't tell you as much as I would like, but I can answer a couple of questions.
I personally am using a 9" CRT front projector, one of just a few that can fully resolve 1080p, projected onto a 100" x 56" screen. Both the 720p and 1080p content looks absolutely awesome! I also have displayed the same content of a direct view 22" NEC monitor, and though the screen is much smaller, the results are equally outstanding. I also plan on trying things out on my little InFocus X1, in order to see how well the codec downconverts, but I haven't had the opportunity as yet.
I haven't directly compared MPEG4 to WMV9 on an apples to apples basis (which would be the only fair way to do it), but I have done quite a bit of MPEG2, MPEG4, and WMV9 encoding on my own, as a hobbyist, and as far as I am concerned, as much as MPEG4 is an improvement over MPEG2, so is WMV9 over MPEG4. WMV9 started out as an MPEG4 variant, but just grew into an entity of its own, and now has very little resemblence code wise to its predecessor. WMV9 is considerably more efficient than MPEG4 (I don't know the actual numbers), and more importantly, is much cleaner and artifact free. And like I said, when one (or some) of us spot problem areas in the codec, MS is very quick to respond, analyzing the problem, and then patching the code. We have some very sharp eyed testers, and MS is smart enough to take advantage of the free observations they are getting and using those observations to continue improving the codec (can you say WMV10?
).That's about all I can offer right now, but MS should be making some official announcements in the not too distant future...
You know, to all of you MS haters, I hope you realize that there are very real people behind all of this - you know, with children and families, and mortgages to pay, and that MS is not just some horrible monster hiding in a cave somewhere preparing to invade Los Angelos or something. The people I have gotten to know are a great bunch of extremely talented, dedicated people who are not only proud of their work, but are constantly reaching higher and higher to bring the finest product possible to us consumers. MS, with its very deep pockets, has just taken a small piece of its profits and invested it in this team and told them basically to go for it. These people are not number crunchers - they are craftsmen who are working to combine art and science together to improve the video experience for all of us. They are not trying to change the world - just their little corner of it, and I have nothing but the utmost repect for this amazing team. So think what you want and do as you please - If you really hate MS that much then just don't buy anything with the WMV logo on it - the only one losing out will be you!
oddwunn
I have messed with a lot of Codecs doing video for home and for work. To me WMV has been the best, it takes less MB for the same quality, and has been more compatible then the non MS MPEG formats. Also you also made wmv encoder/converter available free which I appreciate, but FLaskMPEG might be quicker. You guys are doing a good job. Keep it up.
Would you mind talking to the MSWord 02, 03 guys? I have spent hours trying to eliminate one paragraph in an Outline without screwing up the rest of the document. I have thought about throwing my computer out the window because of this but I end up taking out my frustrations on the mouse since it's cheaper.
Those are the type of things that hurt MS.
Please have Bill send me a fleet of new Mice LOL!
I have messed with a lot of Codecs doing video for home and for work. To me WMV has been the best, it takes less MB for the same quality, and has been more compatible then the non MS MPEG formats. Also you also made wmv encoder/converter available free which I appreciate, but FLaskMPEG might be quicker. You guys are doing a good job. Keep it up.
Would you mind talking to the MSWord 02, 03 guys? I have spent hours trying to eliminate one paragraph in an Outline without screwing up the rest of the document. I have thought about throwing my computer out the window because of this but I end up taking out my frustrations on the mouse since it's cheaper.
Those are the type of things that hurt MS.
Please have Bill send me a fleet of new Mice LOL
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