Flanders, ultimately, I do think you're right about Microsoft, they would surely love to sell us discless media, and since VC-1 is really Windows Media 9, they already have all they need to give us some WMV video and PlaysForSure audio. We'll have to see how the new Zune player stacks up to the iPod and iTunes in the technology department, I bet it's no better than ACC in quality, and probably sacrifices quality for a bit more compression, after all, they probably don't think we even notice the difference. Since VC-1 is sort of based on next-gen MPEG, it has a better compression ratio and therefore can handle a higher bitrate, I still would rather see fully-compatible MPEG-4 or even just high-bitrate MPEG-2 with better quality and low compression. But that could be me being a video snob.
Thanks everyone for your comments on codecs, I know sometimes it can be one of those behind-the-scenes nerdy kind of articles and it's good to see people putting thought into why one might be better than another, or why a company would put so much effort into one or another, just based on licensing or quality issues, or even possibly ulterior motives.
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Flanders, ultimately, I do think you're right about Microsoft, they would surely love to sell us discless media, and since VC-1 is really Windows Media 9, they already have all they need to give us some WMV video and PlaysForSure audio. We'll have to see how the new Zune player stacks up to the iPod and iTunes in the technology department, I bet it's no better than ACC in quality, and probably sacrifices quality for a bit more compression, after all, they probably don't think we even notice the difference. Since VC-1 is sort of based on next-gen MPEG, it has a better compression ratio and therefore can handle a higher bitrate, I still would rather see fully-compatible MPEG-4 or even just high-bitrate MPEG-2 with better quality and low compression. But that could be me being a video snob.
Thanks everyone for your comments on codecs, I know sometimes it can be one of those behind-the-scenes nerdy kind of articles and it's good to see people putting thought into why one might be better than another, or why a company would put so much effort into one or another, just based on licensing or quality issues, or even possibly ulterior motives.