Windows Media 9

Posted on 2003/10/15 23:59:18 (October 2003) by john.

Microsoft want to take over the world, and I want to let them.

Tonight I attended a lecture about Windows Media 9, and I have to say I was very impressed. First of all, it went on for a good hour and a half, and I wasn't bored. This in itself is something of an achievement - I usually have a fairly short attention span when it comes to listening to other people speak. More seriously though, the subject matter itself was very impressive.

The term Windows Media 9 has been bounced backwards and forwards a lot recently. It seems to be on everyone's lips, especially in the broadcast industry. However, one might be forgiven for being a little unclear about what it actually constitutes. In short I think you can probably describe it as Microsoft's holistic approach to supporting digital media. It encompasses a video and audio compression standard, along with implementations of those standards in components, an SDK to let developers harness those components, as well as a couple of bits of software (Media Player and Media Encoder) for playback and creation of Windows Media 9 content. Oh, and something or other about digital rights management.

At the heart of it, of course, are the compression standards, which seem to just blow everything else around out of the water. Apparently large parts of the codec were developed by the naturally brilliant people at Microsoft's Research Centre in Beijing. In very broad terms, WM9 can compress up to two or three times as well as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. Consider for example MPEG-2 as used in digital TV systems - currently a video stream, at 720 x 576 resolution, will take up about 4 Megabits a second. WM9 can get this down to about 1.5 Mb/s without (apparently) any noticeable loss in quality. Normally in a terrestrial transmission in the UK, a single frequency can carry a total of either 18 or 24 Mb/s depending on the error tolerance. This would normally mean just four or five video services in a single frequency. Given that only six frequencies are currently allocated for DTT in the UK, this gives us our current limit on the number of channels - somewhere around 20 with video and audio, plus a few audio only. With WM9, we could be looking at double the number of channels at least, without any major change in the infrastructure. Obviously, current set top boxes would have to be replaced, but given some of Microsoft's other advances, it's becoming increasingly likely set top boxes are going to become a thing of the past anyway.

The codecs also seem to perform really well for high definition television. There seems to be some disagreement over exactly what "high definition" means, but certainly horizontal resolutions of over 1000 pixels are higher than what we're currently used to, and this seems to be the goal for the future. This also gave an insight into why Microsoft are doing all of this in the first place - up to a point it seems like they're not making any money out of it - most of the components are given away free, or virtually free, and they're moving towards making WM9 an open standard (very commendable). Amidst all this admirable intent though, there did seem to be two reasons driving WM9 from the financial point of view.

Apparently, the original reason behind the development of WM9 was to do with DVD players. It was pointed out that there hasn't ever been a software DVD player shipped as part of Windows. DVDs are based on MPEG-2 which is a patented standard, and as such requires a license fee for every implementation shipped. Microsoft looked at the cost of writing their own DVD player software, and paying a license fee with every copy of Windows sold, and, seeing as it was such a huge sum, decided instead they could put that money towards trying to shape the next generation of digital media support.

The second driving force, perhaps not spelled out so clearly, was also DVD related. Industry leaders are busy discussing the future of DVD at the moment, and are looking for a higher definition alternative. WM9 is the only standard that supports high definition that has players capable of supporting the format already in the marketplace (i.e. PCs). It seems very likely, given that there are currently no other serious contenders, that the next generation of DVDs will run on WM9 - this not only means big money for Microsoft, but also breaks them into a completely new market.

As part of the presentation, we were also given a demonstration of Windows XP Media Center Edition. Up until now I've been pretty reserved in my judgement of XP, but Media Center really changed my opinion. It is just so slick, in fact I would even go so far as to describe it as a thing of beauty. This vague concept of convergence (your TV, VCR, stereo, and PC all coming together into one box) that has been banded about so much the last year really seems to have finally been produced in Media Center. Apparently most of these machines sold in the UK will come with a DVB-T tuner, and the interface to this was consistently smooth and good looking. This was especially pleasing to me having been irritated so much by the consistently crap and frustrating software provided by Hauppauge with my DVB-T card. Better still, more or less all of Media Center can be worked via remote control turning it, as the guy from Microsoft put it, from a two foot experience, into a ten foot experience.

I have been cynical and critical about Microsoft as much as anyone else for the last few years, but I really feel now like they've got to a turning point. They might still be an overbearing, aggressive and domineering company. That said, you've got to take your hat off to them. Quite simply, no-one else is doing anything as downright fantastic as they are in the field of digital media.

John, my friend, you are indeed a true 'hat off to micro$oft' capitalist. '
However.... all I can say right now is Nachi Worm and RPC=no job. Grrrrr.

Posted by Kev at 2003/10/16 12:51:56.

Yes, I shall definately be purchasing a DVB-T card when I come back to the UK, and after experiencing aggressively crap software with my old analogue card, it's nice to now that there will be M$ software to drive it. When you say Win XP Media Center Edition, is that just a copy of XP with the media center, Ugh...cenTRE, bundled with it or yet another version of Windows?

Posted by Simon at 2003/10/16 07:39:16.

I've invented a mathematically impossible compression system that'll blow them *all* into the weeds. I'm only one step away from total world domination (although the code will in fact be freeware, just to annoy the media empires). I am in fact not joking ... I have a highly redundant binary stream, and I only need to throw away 50% of it ... but haven't the time (currently) to complete the job. All I can say is RLE (or GZip) won't do the job, but there *have* to be other binary compression systems, yes? Anybody want to help?

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/10/16 08:44:08.

Jimmy: John and me wrote some compression applications. John's ran on an Amiga and mine on an Apple Mac. Are these any use to you?

Posted by dsp at 2003/10/16 13:04:20.

Back on topic, I have a lot of respect for MS and I feel there will always be a career if you have these skills. Wish I thought of it.

Posted by dsp at 2003/10/16 13:07:59.

Oohh, I have to rant a bit in response to this kind of thing. ;)

If they're going to market as a new standard for digital TV or DVD players, then that's pretty cool, and I hope it goes well there.

But I really don't want this stuff on my computer. I don't really gain anything from watching DVDs or TV programmes on one screen as opposed to another. And my computer is mine. I create stuff on it, I use it for work, I use it for personal contacts. And when I'm doing that, I object to having all kinds of proto-spyware and copy protection crap installed on it to let me watch things I don't want to watch anyway. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to rip stuff off, and I don't mind having those things in my TV or DVD player, because I don't use my TV or DVD player for creating stuff.

And why do they want it on our computers? Probably just to cause more hassle with adverts and similar.

Posted by Mark at 2003/10/16 14:07:51.

I don't suppose any of the video files shown featured swirling patterns, and soothing voices telling you that you are feeling sleepy?

Posted by Graf at 2003/10/16 16:36:11.

Thanks John, that was really quite interesting reading. It's nice to hear something nice about Microshite.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2003/10/21 18:01:41.

Dear Sir

Does Windows Media 9 Player

work with Windows 98 o/s

Many Thanks

Regards

Mark Liggins.

Posted by Mark Garry Liggins at 2004/06/08 15:44:39.

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