WMA vs. AAC

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 4:45 pm

So I've done some research and it turns out that WMA is actually really cool -- for a lot of different reasons. The most important to me is that its rights management tech is built into the format and not locked in to any particular brand.

Um. Woo?

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:05 pm

But what about the quality?

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:17 pm

WMA sucks because it has DRM.

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:54 pm

quantus wrote:WMA sucks because it has DRM.

My point exactly. The extremetech guy is advancing the DRM as an advantage, not a con!

My feeling on quality is: make a 9 MB file instead of a 6 MB file and leave me alone.

I am waiting for the following feedback loop. Heavily restrictive DRM makes it difficult to copy digital media obtained from traditional publishers. Alternative publishers offer works in less restrictive formats, under less restrictive licenses. People tend to download and listen to them, simply because they're easier to get. They become popular. Artists look at this and think, "Hey, I want a piece of that action" and leave their traditional publishers for the alternative ones. Several wash and rinse cycles later, DRM is rightfully consigned to the garbage heap.

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:54 pm

I am also waiting for the same loop to happen with "software" substituted for "media".

Post by **Jonathan** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 11:03 pm

Incidently, the extremetech guy feels that WMA9 is top of the class when it comes to quality.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 10:43 pm

WMA9 is a couple generations down the line from mp3 so it better be more compressed for better quality. It is still the suck though since it's proprietary. Anyways, unless you're compressing audio for a movie and trying to get video and audio on a cd (a la divx, xvid, etc..) there's not much difference between a 60 and 90 megs for the equivalent of an audio cd as jonathan commented. You're not going to see divx and xvid using wma because it's proprietary. And, you're sure as hell not going to see them using a format that supports DRM. I wish that people got it through their heads that the current pricing scheme is just rediculous.

On a side note, if windows costs $10 I'd consider buying it like I did from the CMU computer store just for the fact it saved me the time of finding it and downloading it myself and I had the slight added comfort that it actually did have a license. If software in general cost only a couple bucks, sure I'd buy it since I didn't have to spend the time finding a warezed copy and I can put that time into earning more money. If cd's cost a buck or so, maybe I'd buy it if I liked the music. I'm sure as hell not going to go to a store and buy it for $15. MAYBE there can be a little mark up on more niche genres like classical since it can be hard to find mp3s of reasonable quality and complete id3 tags on the net.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 10:48 pm

Oh, what really annoys the fuck out of me are the people offering their software on download.com for evaluation and then expect $20 or $30 for their piece of shit software. I wouldn't even pay that much for windows and it does a assload more albeit not necessarily without an assload of bugs and security holes to boot.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 10:49 pm

Dwindlehop wrote:Incidently, the extremetech guy feels that WMA9 is top of the class when it comes to quality.

I think that extremetech should consider this guy's resignation to have been tendered with this opinion.

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 10:56 pm

Ok, I think someone needs to write a half-way decent piece of software, sell it for a buck or two and charge a yearly subscription to get updates of another buck or so. People already pay 60/month on cable, so what's the big deal to pay a buck for something useful? They probably go to the dollar store and pick up more junk they won't use for more money. The better the software, the more people that use it the more money you'd make. It'd be simple and cheap enough that the warez people won't really find much of a niche in distributing it unless it becomes insanely popular in which case, you reduce the rate some to make it less economical to distribute. You play with the real economics of supply and demand instead of just setting whatever price comes to your head.

Software has the big advantage compared to other products in that you can actually continuously upgrade it to keep people coming back. Companies are too keyed into trying to make a lot of money fast instead of making a little now and growing the user base to make much more later.

Ad based products actually work, because they distribute it for a price people don't mind paying - free; and they get their penny or two every time someone clicks on the ad (by accident probably). Mind you, this is WAY more annoying to the user which is why it pretty much has to be distributed as free. Also, the annoyingness keeps the person from wanting to come back.

I think the same pricing mechanism should be applied to MMORPGs. Quite simply, they're still too expensive for what they are, a waste of time. If they were cheaper, like a buck or two a month, I'm sure Jonathan would've kept his FFXI subscription as would Alan too I bet. That way, you can cheaply set it aside and pick it back up again later when you want to. I don't know how much they spend on servers per player, but cheaper means more players, means cheaper per player cost to maintain, which leads to more profit. Hell, it'd even solve the problem of there just not being enough people in the world at once since there would be so many more people.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sun Feb 15, 2004 4:20 am

I like how you're making rash generalizations and statements without knowing any of the variables involved in the business side. There's a lot more shit in the mix than you're not considering.

VLSmooth · Post by **VLSmooth** » Sun Feb 15, 2004 4:22 am

Quantus == TROLL!

quantus · Post by **quantus** » Mon Feb 16, 2004 6:09 am

Jason wrote:I like how you're making rash generalizations and statements without knowing any of the variables involved in the business side. There's a lot more shit in the mix than you're not considering.

Yes, of course I'm not outlining a complete business plan, so yeah, there are things I'm not considering in what I wrote. I still hold that there's enough truth to the generalizations to hold for most cases. I'm not considering niche pieces of software like Cadence sells. Besides, it'd be much more constructive if you didn't make a rash generalization about everything I wrote and instead made a point.

bob · Post by **bob** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 9:57 pm

I agree with Joe in some respects. Most software is too expensive. Like Photoshop? Probably doesn't need to cost $400. I'd actually pay for it if it were $50.

Subscription based games, however. That's a little different. They've got huge dev teams making them, which costs a lot. The $10-15/month fee is to cover bandwidth, server maintainence, and the salaries of the huge crew that sits there all the time and updates content for you. Of course, if they designed the technology better from the start, they often wouldn't need such a huge crew to update, or at least they could update more stuff faster.

The ideal MMP would be made by one or two completely awesome guys in their spare time, cost $1 a month, and appeal to huge numbers of people. Everybody wins there.

this completely biased opinion brought to you by bob[/i]

Post by **Jonathan** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 10:06 pm

bob wrote:The ideal MMP would be made by one or two completely awesome guys in their spare time, cost $1 a month, and appeal to huge numbers of people. Everybody wins there.

A Tale In The Desert?

Post by **Jonathan** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 10:08 pm

Nevermind. ATITD costs $14/month. But then, there's no cost for the box. Eh.