Digital media took center stage in Microsoft's announcements at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January, as the company announced a new reference platform for portable digital media players, new licensing terms for Windows Media for ISVs and device manufacturers, and a digital media add-on for Windows XP. The barrage of announcements highlights Microsoft's belief that the ability to create, store, and distribute digital media will become an increasingly important selling point for PCs and Windows Servers.

Media2Go Platform

Microsoft and Intel have teamed up to develop a new reference platform, called Media2Go, for portable video and audio players. Similar in concept to Microsoft's Pocket PC platform for handheld computers and the Smartphone platform for wireless phones, Media2Go will be based on the next version of Windows CE .NET (currently code-named McKendric). It will enable portable devices to quickly and easily download digital media from a Windows XP PC, and then organize and play that media. The devices will use Intel's XScale family of processors.

Media2Go devices will support video, audio, and digital pictures, and will natively support the Windows Media Format and popular non-Microsoft file types, including MP3 audio and MPEG-4 video; Intel and OEMs can choose to add codecs for other formats as well. A technology called Sync and Go will be used to transfer digital media files to the devices. Sync and Go is based on ActiveSync, Microsoft’s data transfer technology for Pocket PCs, but the user interface is optimized for media files—for example, songs are listed with their title and the artist's name, rather than simply as a file name. The devices will support file transfer over IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and USB 2.0 connections.

So far, manufacturers iRiver, Samsung, Sanyo, and ViewSonic have agreed to build devices based on the Media2Go platform. They are expected to be available by early 2004 at prices between US$200 and US$400, according to an Intel spokesperson.

New Licensing Terms for Windows Media

In conjunction with the final release of the Windows Media 9 Series platform, Microsoft has introduced new licensing terms for device manufacturers and ISVs that want to encode, decode, and play Windows Media files on non-Windows platforms. (For background on Windows Media 9, see "Windows Media Platform Updated with Series 9" on page 3 of the Nov. 2002 Update.)

The changes are intended to increase the use of Windows Media technologies on non-Windows devices. Microsoft is particularly concerned that consumer electronics companies will favor MPEG-4, the successor to the popular MPEG-2 standard, on the next generation of consumer electronics devices. Unlike Windows Media, which is solely owned by Microsoft, the patents to MPEG-4 are owned by MPEG-LA, a consortium of companies who collect royalties for their use, with Sony owning the largest number of patents. (Microsoft is a patent holder for MPEG-4 as well.) To address this threat and help increase adoption of Windows Media, Microsoft is emphasizing that the new licensing terms for Windows Media are cheaper and less restrictive than the terms for MPEG-4.

The changes can be summarized as follows:

Standard licenses and prices. For several years, Microsoft has allowed device and chip manufacturers to redistribute certain Windows Media components, including codecs (used for compressing and decompressing media content) and digital rights management components (used for protecting content). Some of these manufacturers also licensed the right to view the Windows Media source code to create their own versions of components—for example, a company selling a video device with a special-purpose embedded operating system might need to modify the Windows Media codecs to work on its device. However, these licenses were granted on a case-by-case basis and were subject to different (and unpublished) terms and fees.

Now, any company may license the right to redistribute or create Windows Media components, including ISVs that specialize in media applications for non-Windows platforms, such as Macintosh or Linux. All licenses will be good until 2012, with an automatic five-year extension, and will be covered by a standard, published price list.

Companies that develop solutions for Windows-based PCs and devices will continue to pay no fees. And, unlike the case with MPEG-4, Microsoft will not charge companies for distributing Windows Media content to users.

Codecs separated from file type. Before, when audio and video was encoded with the Windows Media codecs, it could be exported only into an Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) file. Now, developers can encode content using the Windows Media 9 codecs, then put this content in a different "container," allowing it to be delivered within an AVI file, for instance.

This is mainly intended for ISVs whose encoding and playback applications do not currently support ASF files but who want to use the Windows Media codecs (presumably because of their compression capabilities). Instead of having to rewrite their applications to support ASF files, these ISVs can license the Windows Media codecs for redistribution with their applications, or license the source code and create their own special-purpose codecs.

More details about the licenses, including a price list, are available at www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/create/licensing.aspx.

Plus! Digital Media Edition

Microsoft has also released Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP, a desktop application that lets consumers record vinyl records and cassette tapes to a PC, create CD labels and covers, and use their computer as a musical alarm clock, among other functions. It also includes Sync and Go for transferring digital media to Pocket PCs.

This is the first edition of Plus! that focuses on digital media and includes product activation, a piracy-prevention technology previously used in other Microsoft products, such as Office XP and Windows XP. Product activation prevents users from installing each copy of Plus! on more than one PC. (For details on how product activation works, see "Operating System Activation Aims at Piracy" on page 24 of the Mar. 2001 Update.)

Plus! Digital Media Edition costs US$20 and is now available via download at www.microsoft.com/plus. It will be offered through retail stores and OEMs in early 2003.