Regulators back EC Microsoft ruling
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David Wulff wrote: I am fed up of not being able to preview tracks by my favourite bands or watch web casts on the beeb sites because they insist of using Real crap. You need a Real Alternative (and the exceptionally classy Media Player Classic) ;) How do you move in a world of fog, That's always changing things? Makes me wish that i could be a dog, When i see the price that you pay.
Sounds cool, but what is this Media Player Classic thing? [edit] NM, I'm just not all here tonight. :rolleyes: :-O
David Wulff The Royal Woofle Museum
Putting the laughter back into slaughter
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Mike.NET wrote: How will MS get our of this [^] one? Bribery tends to work best with European Commissioners ;-) Instead of bundling the program into its Windows operating system as Microsoft does at present, the Commission is expected to demand that the company sells two versions of Windows to PC manufacturers: one with Media Player and one with the program stripped out. Hmm. Guess which version will sell more. What at stupid idea! Best plan. Make MS ship the Real Codec and any other of the big media streamers who are whining. (It'll mean I don't need to install that spyware crap just to view / listen to stuff on the BBC web-site.) the Commission also wants to force Microsoft to share enough secret code in Windows with rivals in order to allow them to design server software that works as smoothly with the ubiquitous operating system as Microsoft's own server software. I don't understand this. What are we missing? Michael But you know when the truth is told, That you can get what you want or you can just get old, Your're going to kick off before you even get halfway through. When will you realise... Vienna waits for you? - "The Stranger," Billy Joel
Michael P Butler wrote: Make MS ship the Real Codec Real don't have a codec, because they want you to use their crappy player rather than any other player you might want to use. The same goes for QuickTime. I guess they assume that you won't pay them money for a bare codec. Neither manufacturer will license their algorithms and formats to Microsoft for inclusion in WMP. Microsoft does license the WMA and WMV formats. Having said that, I found Ace Media Player[^] yesterday, that uses Real and Apple's proprietary APIs to load their player engines if you have them installed. You can play all formats in it. I was actually after the taskbar-player feature that's oddly missing from Windows Media Player, but there you go... It's kind of ironic that the case is supposed to be about promoting open standards and formats, and yet the main beneficiaries will be those who have proprietary formats. Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder