[vorbis] new MS codecs

[Freya]

I thought this might be interesting to you, it's an
extract from the latest streaming media newsletter, I
was intrested to note that MS are claiming cd quality
audio at 48kbps whichi is obviously very low, I didn't
think much of it at first because nobody uses MS
codecs for audio anyway! However (a bit I missed off
this quote by the look of it) I then read mention of
portable audio players and thought hmmm, if you can
get cd quality audio in a third of the memory, people
might use it for that. I mean imagine if you have one
of those little 16mb winCE things, not a lot of use
really but then if you had 3 times the space it would
be like 48mb and 32 would be like 96mb and it all
starts sounding a lot more useful.

Anyway I just thought it was interesting, probably it
sounds horrible :)

love

Freya

"During his keynote, Ballmer talked about the next
operating system, codenamed “Whistler”, which features
advanced audio and video functions. He also unveiled
new Windows Media 8 audio and video codecs with
significant quality improvements. Near CD-quality
audio is now available at 48Kbps, beating Microsoft’s
previous 64Kbps rate. For video, “near VHS” is
available at 250Kbps, while “near DVD” is at 500Kbps. 

The quest for higher quality audio and video is
growing rapidly. In May, RealNetworks announced
RealVideo 8, which it claims can show VHS quality
video at about 300Kbps. More recently, it announced
RealAudio 8, which provides CD quality audio at 64Kbps
– half the size of MP3. However, Microsoft now has the
upper hand, with its announcement that it will support
CD quality audio at 48Kbps. Windows Media 8 codecs are
backward-compatible with Windows Media Player 7 and
6.4." 

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