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undotwa · Jun 22, 2002, 01:33 AM

I was reading <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/corona.asp" target="_blank">this</a> article on <a href="http://www.winsupersite.com" target="_blank">WinSuperSite</a>, and I noticed that the author has some incredible bias:

<blockquote>quote:<hr />With the increased emphasis on consumer oriented digital media tasks at Microsoft, the Windows Media division has become increasingly important to the software giant's image. It's Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) codecs are widely acknowledged as being superior to any and all competition, and consumer acceptance increased dramatically in 2001 as CD players, car stereos, and DVD players were added to the ranks of portable audio players that already support the formats. Microsoft notes that Windows Media-compatible devices are the most often used of any players, with over 350 million units sold.<hr /></blockquote>I mean wow. Microsoft must brainwash their developers like 10x more than Apple does.

[ 06-22-2002, 01:34 AM: Message edited by: undotwa ]

juanvaldes · Jun 22, 2002, 01:40 AM

I only need to <a href="http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=45;t=006499" target="_blank">see it in action</a>. To know how much bull that is.

Remember being bundled and shoved down everyone's throats != better. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

Sap · Jun 22, 2002, 01:48 AM

Juan, all I learned from that thread is:

<blockquote>quote:<hr /> WMP can actually produce a decent streaming video at 56k.. much better than Quicktime or Real (did I just say that?!) Trust me, I do this stuff for a living. <hr /></blockquote>

Developer · Jun 22, 2002, 01:53 AM

The article is talking about Microsoft's new Corona codec. See the related article at <a href="http://babelfish.altavista.com/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticke r%2Fdata%2Fwst-20.06.02-005%2F&lp=de_en&tt=url&urltext=&doit=done" target="_blank">heise</a>.

undotwa · Jun 22, 2002, 02:01 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Developer:
The article is talking about Microsoft's new Corona codec. See the related article at <a href="http://babelfish.altavista.com/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticke r%2Fdata%2Fwst-20.06.02-005%2F&lp=de_en&tt=url&urltext=&doit=done" target="_blank">heise</a>.<hr /></blockquote>I know that, but they still are far from being 'the most advanced video codecs in the world'. It's MPEG-2 (I think).

AlbertWu · Jun 22, 2002, 02:15 AM

all the mpeg codecs are hella huge. WMV, like real and QT, is optimized for streaming.

juanvaldes · Jun 22, 2002, 02:46 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Sap:
Juan, all I learned from that thread is:

<blockquote>quote:<hr /> WMP can actually produce a decent streaming video at 56k.. much better than Quicktime or Real (did I just say that?!) Trust me, I do this stuff for a living. <hr /></blockquote><hr /></blockquote>you had to watch the stream... a movie of Monkey Ball 2 were played and WMP is "okay" when nothing moves but when everything is moving like in that game well, it's total complete blurry crap. Not even worth watching.

I think he said it was up on his site, but I'm not sure if it was a streaming version or a actual movie.

Sap · Jun 22, 2002, 03:10 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by juanvaldes:
you had to watch the stream... a movie of Monkey Ball 2 were played and WMP is "okay" when nothing moves but when everything is moving like in that game well, it's total complete blurry crap. Not even worth watching.

I think he said it was up on his site, but I'm not sure if it was a streaming version or a actual movie.<hr /></blockquote>Ah.. Gotcha

ckohler · Jun 22, 2002, 04:23 AM

The video up on the site for download is exactly what was broadcast live. And I stand by my word when I say that Windows Media does the best job at low bitrate (aka 56k) streaming compaired to the other formats (Real, Quicktime, MPEG).

The high-action blurryness is not just Windows Media's fault. Any video format encoded at 37Kbsp would look no better. The benefits of streaming Windows Media at such low bitrates is that it does a good job of cleaning up the image when things are calm on the screen. It also allows for precise controls over sharpness/frame droping. I think in future episodes, we'll use fewer high action video clips and show more screenshots just to be safe.

[ 06-22-2002, 04:54 AM: Message edited by: ckohler ]

Millennium · Jun 22, 2002, 07:07 AM

It's WinSuperSite. Their lips have long been known to be superglued to Billy's posterior. Did you expect them to concede how much better QuickTime, or even Real, is?

TNproud2b · Jun 22, 2002, 08:26 AM

Having used WMP, Quicktime, and RealPlayer, it's obvious that the quality of WMP video is better - and, unbelieveably, is a far less annoying app than RealPlayer or Quicktime...niether of which will see the light of day on my machine.

Mac Zealot · Jun 22, 2002, 11:57 AM

When is kellyhogan going to reply with his stupid thing about how great windows is?

If you want to see someone's lips firmly secured to bill gates' but that's the person to do it.

Sealobo · Jun 22, 2002, 12:11 PM

isn't it true that QT works much better on Mac than on Windows, and WMP works much better on Windows than on Mac??? <img border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" title="" src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" />

rjenkinson · Jun 22, 2002, 12:37 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Mac Zealot:
When is kellyhogan going to reply with his stupid thing about how great windows is?

If you want to see someone's lips firmly secured to bill gates' but that's the person to do it.<hr /></blockquote>whenever the moderators decide to unban him, i suppose.

-r.

HackManDan · Jun 22, 2002, 01:58 PM

.wma files sound as good as mp3s at 1/3 the size. I can encode 80 minutes of music @ 64kps for my hipzip on my pc and get three times as much as music if had used mp3s encoded @ 192.

BlackGriffen · Jun 22, 2002, 02:35 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by HackManDan:
.wma files sound as good as mp3s at 1/3 the size. I can encode 80 minutes of music @ 64kps for my hipzip on my pc and get three times as much as music if had used mp3s encoded @ 192.<hr /></blockquote>Tried ogg? <a href="http://www.vorbis.com/" target="_blank">http://www.vorbis.com/</a> . It's supposed to be pretty darn good, I haven't tried it yet myself (just don't have the time to re-rip my large library).

BlackGriffen

anarkisst · Jun 22, 2002, 02:49 PM

"Microsoft notes that Windows Media-compatible devices are the most often used of any players, with over 350 million units sold."

<a href="http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-937379.html" target="_blank">Whatever...</a>

Changed "Liars" to "Whatever"... :o

[ 06-22-2002, 03:16 PM: Message edited by: anarkisst ]

Jim Paradise · Jun 22, 2002, 04:02 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by rjenkinson:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Mac Zealot:
When is kellyhogan going to reply with his stupid thing about how great windows is?

If you want to see someone's lips firmly secured to bill gates' but that's the person to do it.<hr /></blockquote>whenever the moderators decide to unban him, i suppose.

-r.<hr /></blockquote>When did KellyHogan get banned? ?--o.O--?

istallion · Jun 22, 2002, 04:14 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />"Microsoft notes that Windows Media-compatible devices are the most often used of any players, with over 350 million units sold."

Whatever...<hr /></blockquote>I assume 'devices' and 'units sold' is referring to portable music devices, not media player applications. It sounds accurate because many devices do support WMA.

Millennium · Jun 22, 2002, 04:16 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Jim Paradise:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by rjenkinson:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Mac Zealot:
When is kellyhogan going to reply with his stupid thing about how great windows is?

If you want to see someone's lips firmly secured to bill gates' but that's the person to do it.<hr /></blockquote>whenever the moderators decide to unban him, i suppose.

-r.<hr /></blockquote>When did KellyHogan get banned? ?--o.O--?<hr /></blockquote>It hasn't been very long. I wasn't there for it; I was away for some reason or other.

It's a shame. I'd have argued that while he's certainly too much of a nuisance in the OSX boards to warrant tolerance anymore, he's decent enough here (if a bit annoying at times). Then again, I don't know if it's even possible to just ban someone from specific forums and allow them into others.

Millennium · Jun 22, 2002, 04:18 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by istallion:
 <blockquote>quote:<hr />"Microsoft notes that Windows Media-compatible devices are the most often used of any players, with over 350 million units sold."

Whatever...<hr /></blockquote>I assume 'devices' and 'units sold' is referring to portable music devices, not media player applications. It sounds accurate because many devices do support WMA.<hr /></blockquote>Yes. And it should be noted that this only describes how many units have been sold, and not how they're actually used. There is no WMA-compatible device out there that doesn't also do MP3.

voodoo · Jun 22, 2002, 05:06 PM

WiMP is surely the worst of the media players out there. Now, I am very biased towards Quicktime, but the mere fact that WiMP allows things like launching your browser automatically to an URL sepcified by the creators of a movie is just plain harassment.

(Yes it happened to me when I was playing an <ahem> artistic movie)

Bastards.

Even at decent stream of 320 kbps the image still looks shoddy.

undotwa · Jun 23, 2002, 05:35 AM

Well this is my opinion: QuickTime r0x0rs your b0x0rs (all tho on Windows it's not as good as the Mac version - it's still better than anything else).

Streaming video? I find any player is terrible. It's horrible quality. QuickTime 6's MPEG-4 support is awesome. Just play some of Apple's demo. This just shows my bias towards Apple.. I guess.

Real: Can it do anything other than streaming? And those ads... uhh...
WMP: Not bad, but still has pathetic support for media formats compared to QuickTime. Playback isn't that great. QuickTime's (while not great) interface is better IMHO.
QuickTime: Excellent support for various media formats, good playback support, easy interface - although can get annoying at time (the size of it).