UNITEC – INSTITUTE of TECHNOLOGY
Faculty of Business
Department of Information Systems and Computing
Master of Computing Programme
Course ISCG812: Interactive Multimedia Development 1

WindowsMedia

by

Claudius Benedikt Hildebrand

Due Date: 10. August 2002

Table of Contents

Table of Contents I
Abbreviations II

1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is Multimedia? 1
1.2 Microsoft, the leading Multimedia Company? 1
1.3 Procedure and Analysis Objectives 2

2 Key features of the Multimedia Industry 2
2.1 Microsoft’s main business activities 2
2.2 Microsoft’s competitors 3
2.3 Microsoft’s effort in the Multimedia Industry 4

3 Current software applications used in the Multimedia Industry 5
3.1 Windows Media Series 5
3.1.1 Windows Media Encoder 5
3.1.2 Windows Media Services 6
3.1.3 Windows Media Player 7
3.1.4 Windows Media Rights Manager 8
3.1.5 Windows Media SDK 9
3.2 Comparison – Windows Media Player vs. RealOne 9
3.3 Windows Media Series 9 – Corona 11

4 Current technologies used 12
4.1 Supported Software/Hardware Platforms 12
4.2 Portable Devices 13
4.3 Windows Media 8 Codec vs RealMedia 8 Codec 14
4.4 Open vs. proprietary standards 15

5 Conclusion 16

6 References 22

Abbreviations

Codec compressor/decompressor
DRM Digital Rights Management
Kbps Kilobit per second
IT Information Technology
MP3 MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3
MPEG Moving Pictures Expert Group
MS Microsoft
MSN Microsoft Network
PDA Personal Digital Assistant
SDK Software Development Kit
TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
WMA Windows Media Audio
WMV Windows Media Video

1 Introduction
1.1 What is Multimedia?

Multimedia is one of the buzzwords recently used especially in the new economy. In order to unveil the abstract term “Multimedia”, one could come to the conclusion that multimedia “refers to the integration of various forms of information such as text, graphics, sound and images”. (Abernethy & Allen, 1999, p. 9)

But in fact, multimedia is more than just combining several types of media. Information technology offers the possibility of adding interactivity between the user and the media. A TV channel is not regarded as a multimedia application because of the lack of interactivity although different types of media are used simultaneously. Nevertheless, clicking through a digital encyclopaedia having sound and images in it, is seen as stand-alone multimedia. The next step in the multimedia development stage distributed multimedia. Multimedia elements are no longer stored locally on a CD-ROM as we have seen in the stand-alone multimedia example. They are remotely stored on servers being connected via a network and therefore can be accessed from anywhere in the world. (Agnew & Kellerman, 1996)

1.2 Microsoft, the leading Multimedia Company?

Microsoft Corporation is one of the global players in the software development market. As more than 85% of all client PC operating systems being sold are Microsoft products (Miles, 2000) it is worth to discover the efforts Microsoft made in the multimedia sector. Within any recent Microsoft operating system, there is an application included to enable people to playing multimedia files. Everything began in fall 1991 with the release of Media Player for Windows 3.0 shortly after the first PC soundcard was available. The development continued and by time, more and more features have been added until October 2001, Windows Media Player for Windows XP was released. (Microsoft Corporation, 2002a)

In September 2002, the next version of the Windows Media Series 9, codenamed Corona, will be launched including several new features which will be presented later on in this assignment. (Microsoft Corporation, 2002b)

1.3 Procedure and Analysis Objectives

This report will evaluate the role of Microsoft Corporation in the current multimedia industry. In order to get an impression about Microsoft’s business, there is an overview of Microsoft’s products and services at first. Next, it will be Microsoft’s strongest competitors in the operating system market as most consumers of multimedia services have a Windows operating system which included a player for multimedia content. This player called Windows Media Player is being discussed and compared to the RealNetworks’ RealOne player which is regarded as one of Microsoft’s strongest competitors in the multimedia business. Consecutively, there is an investigation of electronic devices currently supporting the technology provided by Microsoft including different audio- and video codecs. Finally, there is a conclusion showing the results of the research and giving some recommendations when deciding which multimedia environment to choose: Microsoft or RealNetworks.

2 Key features of the Multimedia Industry
2.1 Microsoft’s main business activities

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