Class 6, July 11 Reading - "Windows Media Player"

Wootten seems like he's going through the motions of presenting the pluses and minuses of WMP in the unbiased manner he tries to. But it still seems like Quicktime is the standard that he's comparing everything to. The aspect of digital rights management being superior in WMP seems to benefit only a small portion of the industry, i.e. music/film artists and producers. There's really no incentive for the average consumer, and if WMP would prevent ventures like Youtube from offering streaming content, Microsoft is going to lose out on a big portion of the marketshare that is interested in non-copyrighted material. To be fair, he was an apologist for Microsoft's elimination of support for former RealNetworks file extensions.

Is VC-1 competing directly with H264 for market share? I guess I had the impression that H264 was an accepted industry standard, and that even MS was going to be exploring this codec. But if VC-1 is proprietary, then Microsoft doesn't have much of an incentive to go with H264.

In the end, Wootten is really saying if you have a Mac system and Mac affiliates, use Quicktime. If you have a PC system and PC affiliates, use WMP. Hmm, doesn't leave much room for Real.