 |
 |
|
MP3 and WMA Unless you've been living under a rock, you should know what MP3s are. Ok, in case you have been, here's a summary. MP3 is a format in which audio is compressed down to roughly 1/10th its original size under normal circumstances. You can compress it more or less, but 1/10th is average. This means that a 3 minute track on a CD, which takes up 30MB, can be compressed down to 3MB with very little loss in quality. MP3 swapping came under fire when Napster, an MP3 trading application, was shut down by the RIAA. One of the arguments against MP3s wasn't the compression itself, but the fact that people the legitimately owned the CDs they were ripping (converting to MP3), could give the songs to other people. Many other people, and there's no way to stop it. Enter Microsoft. They feel that their new WMA (Windows Media Audio) format will change all that. Not only are you supposed to get better quality from the compressed files, but the WMA files are supposed to have a copy protection scheme so that only the person that owns certain WMA files can play them. What does this mean for XP? Well out of the box, WinXP doesn't have any MP3 ripping tools, so unless you know where to look, the Windows Media Player that comes with XP will only rip in the WMA format. The problem is two-fold. First, nobody uses WMA that I know of. Microsoft is trying to wedge its proprietary format into the mix for some reason and to be honest, I don't know who's going to go for it. Second, the WMA format is supposed to have better copy protection as I stated before, but what good is it if nobody uses it? Update: Microsoft announced MP3 and DVD support via third-party add-on packs, available on Oct. 25, 2001. Click here to read about it. Playback Ripping |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
