Appendix: The Windows Media Platform

Microsoft’s Windows Media platform supplies a standard set of software components for the following tasks:

• Encoding digital audio and video to support efficient transmission and storage
• Enforcing the rights of content owners to prevent unauthorized copying of content as it moves through the system.

The platform includes the following components:

Codecs compress and decompress content to meet bandwidth and storage space requirements.

Digital rights management (DRM) technology gives content owners a way to define what end users may do with particular pieces of content (e.g., copy it a certain number of times) and enforces these restrictions across applications and devices.

Windows Media Format provides a common way to package content so it can be understood by different applications and devices.

Tools enable content owners, application developers, and hardware manufacturers to support the platform in their products.

Codecs

Audio or video content requires massive amounts of disk space to store, and wide bandwidth to transmit, unless it is compressed. For example, a standard CD-ROM can hold less than one minute of uncompressed standard video and less than 10 seconds of uncompressed high-definition video. To overcome the limitations of disk space and network bandwidth, most digital media is compressed using software known as “codecs” (short for “compressors/decompressors”).