RE: Another Nail in the MP3 coffin?

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

>
>It depends if you want to move away from MP3.
>

I don't - I like them as they are!

>
>The other downside was that although the filesize was smaller it
required a
>higher spec machine to playback. A 486 will easily play a WAV file but
>cannot process fast enough to play MP3. A P90 will play MP3 if doing
>nothing
>else and a P133 or higher will make a great playback machine.

Hmmm... I tried a P133 (old IBM Thinkpad laptop), it wasn't really 100% up
to the job - used to drop-out during MP3 playback occasionally.
(occasionally enough to be annoying!)


>
>Just read this bit in the article ....
>"Consumers can also store more music files encoded in Windows
Media 8
>technology on their hard drive and portable player devices."
>.... I assume it has the similar anti-copy protection to MediaPlayer7
and
>will stop all efforts to share files across a network.


Probably. :-(


>
>I am perfectly happy with the quality and file size of MP3 and the fact
>that
>any of my machines will happliy play MP3's. With higher compression and
>anti-copy, I would need to upgrade all my machines and loose some of
the
>cool features that I currently have.
>
>I'm staying loyal to MP3  :-)
>

Likewise, - but it does kinda make you worry that we might be in a
shrinking
minority if the MP3 format doesn't continue to evolve as well... With BIG
guns like microsoft going full steam ahead with their own alternative, we
all know from recent history what usually happens...

My concern is that MP3 development seems to have "stopped" - IE
the format
or the standard doesn't seem to be undergoing much more R&D. (that I've
heard of anyway) - Perhaps there are some boffins beavering away somewhere
working on MP3+ or MP3Pro, or Enhanced-MP3, or whatever flashy name they
think of for it, but I'm not aware of any announcement being imminent that
MP3 is about to get a 30% performance boost, or that some whizzo new
encoder
makes 30% smaller file sizes for the same quality.

It's just a bit of a worry that when something stops evolving, it usually
dies....

Sorry for the depressing tone!

Paul G.

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