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Windows Media....A Dinosaur?

R

RadioFanBoy

In no particular order:

CBS/AOL
Citadel (ABC)
Bonneville
Entercom
Greater Media
WGN Radio
ESPN Stations
Radio Disney

.....and now

Beasley Broadcasting

All of these companies have either bid farewell to Windows Media in favor of the MP3/Winamp platform, or they are using WM strictly as backup. Is WM as a means of streaming media, going the way of the dinosaurs and dodos?
 
Its kinda stupid!

Windows media is the most compatible with the most computers!!

Several streams i used to listen to have gone to FLASH CRAP that doesnt load for me!! (Totally sickening)
 
Windows Media group tried hard to be the standard, but the majority of listeners went for MP3/Winamp streaming format, along with most web broadcasters. One major reason is because it was free and easy as pie (or if you prefer a different desert, piece of cake), to set up and use no matter if you were the common listener or the newbie broadcaster.

You can't beat free and easy. ;)
 
I would like to go to Flash with AAC+ streaming mainly to save bandwidth and sound better, but right now for capabilities WM can't be beat. Tons of metadata about each song is fed through the stream, and we're now using it to trigger 1-to-1 ads.
 
I run two 128Kbps MP3 streams and now have a test AAC+ stream running at 64Kbps. The 64Kbps AAC+ stream sounds just as good as the 128kbps MP3 stream, and uses half the bandwidth. As AAC+ becomes more of a standard on players I believe I'll be transitioning my listener slots over to that and Shoutcast supports both MP3 and AAC+ streams.
 
Forgot to mention, the reason AAC+ will die is the people who invented it want a rip off price for the licensing, I'll bet Telos paid a fortune to have it in the Tieline. We got a quote to have AAC+ implemented in our iPhone listen application and found out that would drive the price up by several thousand, screw that!

The fact that AAC+ appears to be made by the same people who invented the dead mp3pro format (died for the same reasons, too expensive to license) should give you a hint...
 
While it is true MP3Pro died in part because of its licensing cost, companies holding patents for AAC+ (HE AAC) have formed a patent pool administered by Via Licensing Corporation to provide a single point of license for product makers. Patent licenses are required for end-product companies making hardware or software products which include HE AAC encoders and/or decoders. Unlike the MP3 format, content owners are not required to pay license fees to distribute content in HE AAC.

Here is a link that shows the cost of licensing for AAC+
http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/AAC_fees.cfm

and here is a link showing the licensing cost for MP3 and MP3Pro
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/
 
Down in Florida where the telco and cable are barely able to keep up with the customer growth the question of whether or not to use WM wouldn't even be ask. Here it is annoying at times to try other compressions like Flash-sounds watery. Only WM comes through loud and clear. Remember, not all internet ( connections ) are created equal. WM works here some of the others don't...go figure
 
We just ditched windows media this week to switch to a new platform involving a different server. The fact is that Microsoft dropped the ball and hasn't updated their player to support new codecs like AAC+, and their encoder is ancient and buggy. No broadcaster wants to use it and most are going the Wowza or other similar routes where you broadcast AAC+ and use a flash player client that works on any browser.
 
V.Riley said:
While it is true MP3Pro died in part because of its licensing cost,
Click to expand...
Actually believe it or not it still lives on in the form of Live365 (We broadcasters have been BEGGING them on the boards over there to convert to AAC+ but they won't do it!!)
Unlike the MP3 format, content owners are not required to pay license fees to distribute content in HE AAC.
Here is a link that shows the cost of licensing for AAC+
http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/AAC_fees.cfm

and here is a link showing the licensing cost for MP3 and MP3Pro
http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/
Click to expand...
All the more reason for Live365 to make the switch.

Go figure...... ???

Cheers :D
 
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