Microsoft Pushes Windows Media Player Forward
On Thursday Microsoft announced its latest player for the Mac, Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, which takes advantage of the new "Aqua" interface.
Microsoft said it created the player to "meet demand for Windows Media content on the Mac OS X platform." A version of the Windows Media Player has been available for older Mac versions, but the OS X lacked its own native player.
The new player will support Windows Media downloading, streaming and digital rights management (DRM), as well as its latest audio and video version 8 codecs.
"Windows Media Player for Mac OS X brings together the excitement of the new Aqua interface with the high quality of Windows Media," said Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft. "This new player demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to providing the highest-quality digital media playback for users of Mac."
The player will be available as a free download this fall.
Multimedia with Microsoft's Windows XP
Microsoft also announced new MP3 ripping and DVD playback for the player on its new Windows XP operating system, to be released in October. When Windows Media Player 8 was announced earlier this year, it was criticized for not having built-in support for MP3 ripping. Now, with the MP3 Creation Pack add-on, support for MP3 encoding will be enabled, although for a yet to be disclosed fee.
Currently, only RealNetworks' RealJukebox player allows MP3 ripping, although full CD-quality isn't supported in its free version. Microsoft's Windows Media Player, meanwhile, only rips to its own Windows Media Audio format. For many users, this is an inconvenience since MP3 is still the preferred format. Microsoft touts this as an advantage to consumers, since it claims its latest audio codec sounds better than MP3s, at half the bit rate.
The DVD Decoder Pack is the second add-on (again for a yet to be determined price), which will add support for DVD playback in Windows Media Player for Windows XP. Generally, this will only apply to users who don't have a DVD decoder already installed.
Microsoft said these add-ons (created by CyberLink, InterVideo and RAVISENT) gives consumers more "flexibility and choice" when choosing a format, as well as good third party plug-in support.
But the tight integration of Windows Media Player into Windows XP has had critics charging that it's doing the same thing with streaming media that it did with Web browsing, with Internet Explorer. By bundling Windows Media Player with the operating system, many say it's just Microsoft's way of trying to top RealNetworks and Apple. In fact, the question over bundled media players contributed in part to failed talks between AOL Time Warner and Microsoft, to put AOL software on the Windows XP CD.
The real reason why Microsoft never added native support for MP3 ripping is because of the high licensing fees it would have had to pay rights-holder Thomson Multimedia. By adding MP3 support through third party companies, Microsoft avoids paying high fees while giving end-users what they want.
With support for MP3 ripping and DVD playback, Windows Media Player gets a leg up on the competition, and may get more streaming users, too. RealNetworks doesn't offer an all-in-one player, and has never supported DVD playback. So users will be using Windows Media Player without even thinking twice about it. But in other ways, the battle is being played on more even ground. For the first time ever, Windows Media Player has a price — much like RealNetworks' "plus" versions, which cost up to $30.00 with extra, un-crippled features.
In fact, the new version of Windows Media Player (version 8) will only be available to Windows XP users — no upgrade will be made available for existing WMP 7 users. Recently, Microsoft has even dropped the version number and is simply calling it "Windows Media Player for Windows XP."