Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs was asked during a November meeting with analysts whether the company would ever make its iPod music player work directly with something other than its iTunes Music Store. There was a noticeable sense of accomplishment in his voice when he answered. First he pointed out the dominant market position achieved by the iPod. Then he noted that the iTunes store had just captured more than 80 percent of the market for legally downloaded music. "Why should we work with another music store when we're working with the Microsoft of music stores?" he asked, getting a burst of laughter from those around him.

Jobs was referring to the dominance achieved by Microsoft's Windows operating system on PCs. But more than delivering a competitive jab, his answer underscored the situation in which Apple finds itself -- as the market leader in music downloads and portable music players. Microsoft would like to chip away at that lead on both fronts. The Redmond software company has said it plans to offer a music download service later this year through its MSN Internet service. With Seattle-based Loudeye, Microsoft last month began offering a service that lets other companies launch online music stores.

News source: Seattle PI

Audio Capabilities:
Audio conversion, editing, and merging
Extensive list of supported conversions
Advanced audio CD burning from WAV, MP3, WMA, and OGG formats
Extract and save audio content of video files to sound files
MusicID audio recognition
Lyrics search, audio tag editing, and CDDB support
Highly customizable, configurable, and user-friendly interface

Video Capabilities:
Data CD and DVD burning
Powerful video editing for all popular video formats and an extensive list of filters, effects, and editing operations
Video creation, combining, and extraction
Batch video processing
Video capture
Media management
Extract video frames to image files in batch mode. Supported formats include BMP, GIF, JPG, PCX, PNG, RAS, PPM, TGA, and TIF
Insert images into existing video files or create new videos from a collection of image files
Create video files from still frame images and other videos
Add over 30 effects and color adjustment operations to your video for powerful enhancement and alternation
Video editing is available for AVI (uncompressed), AVI (compressed using any available codec), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, and ASF.
You can use a comprehensive set of video editing operations: crop, delete frame, delete selection (video and/or audio), resize, rotate, mirror, flip, trim, adjust audio volume, and much more

Combination Audio and Video Capabilities:
Blaze Media Pro's unique Media Manager makes it easy to work with all your audio and video creations — playback at your fingertips. Even rename, copy, move, or tag files instantly.
Burn data CD/DVDs to safekeep your multimedia creations (or any other files)
Insert audio files, such as WAV, WMA, and MP3, into video files
Extract audio from video files. The possibilities are endless.
Work with specific tracks, frames, or even a range of seconds.
Once you combine your audio and video, batch processing is available with the Batch Video Processor feature. For fast, efficient processing, you can run most video processing operations on a list of files.

Supported Conversions:
CD to WAV, MP3, WMA, and OGG
WAV, WMA, OGG, AIF, VOX, MP2, MPC/+, G.72x, AU, and RAW to MP3
MP3, WMA, OGG, AIF, VOX, MP2, MPC/+, G.72x, AU, and RAW to WAV
MP3, OGG, WAV, AIF, VOX, MP2, MPC/+, G.72x, AU, and RAW to WMA
MP3, WMA, OGG, AIF, VOX, MP2, MPC/+, G.72x, AU, and RAW to OGG
WAV/MP3/WMA/OGG to CD burning
WAV/MP3 Compression
Two-way video conversions among MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, WMV, ASF, Multi-Page TIFF, and FLIC
MPEG conversion options available for VCD, SVCD, and DVD compliant output

Configurable Interface:
Intuitive design
Complete drag and drop features
Fully skinnable interface
Highly customizable options and settings



There are 20 additional comments
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(4 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by KeR on 05 Jan 2004 - 07:42
I didn't know Microsoft was working on a portable media player that could also play video
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by musicmaster on 05 Jan 2004 - 12:41
that would be Media Center
Quote this comment #1.2 Posted by snippet1 on 05 Jan 2004 - 12:55
Sweet - colour screen!
But all this is one of the reasons why I won't buy an iPod.
Quote this comment #1.3 Posted by dp123 on 05 Jan 2004 - 18:11
Is that the mini-headphone jack on the FRONT of the display? Ha, ha, ha! Microsoft has a bunch of morons working for them that just don't get it. What do I do when I want music not video? How do I slip it into my pocket with the headphone jack stickin out and into my hip?

The answer: Microsoft knows they don't have a better music player and THINk they are ready to make video mainstream. But they aren't.

(Yes, I know it's a prototype and yes, I know there'll be many designs.)
Quote this comment #1.4 Posted by el22 on 05 Jan 2004 - 18:39
QUOTE (#1.3)
The answer: Microsoft knows they don't have a better music player and THINk they are ready to make video mainstream. But they aren't.

Sorry to dissapoint your anti-microsoft assumptions
But that's not a mini-headphone jack. It's a button. Probably for power or to rotate the display. You can easily see that in the zoomed image:

http://www.winsupersite.com/images/showcas..._preview_03.jpg

And anyway, as you say, this was the first public prototype so be sure it won't be anything like that.

You can see another prototype from ViewSonic here.
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Chicane-UK on 05 Jan 2004 - 08:08
I think the problem is Microsofts well known attitude to 3rd party competition developing directly for its products.

If Apple made the iTMS work with Windows Media Player, Microsoft would surely start trying to find ways to sneakily stop media player from working with iTMS in later updates.. thus it would make it look as if the iTMS wasn't working properly, or Apple was to blame.

Its not so far fetched - they have done this over and over again.

I think Apple are better off doing as they are for now.
Quote this comment #2.1 Posted by macrosslover on 05 Jan 2004 - 08:17
MS maybe would have done that back in the old days, but not now, they would just beat them with a better product. take real for example, MS has never done anything to make that product stop working with windows (unfortunately ). Real has done a good job of screwing that up themselves. winamp, perceived by many to be much better mp3 player than WMP, but as far as i know, people have never had problems running winamp because of Microsoft's actions.

i'm not saying MS has never done anything like you have described, but i think those days are long gone and if they did take on Apple, they would just beat them with a better product, and a bigger base to bundle the product with.
Quote this comment #2.2 Posted by aristotle-dude on 05 Jan 2004 - 17:29
What about MSN Messenger? They changed the protocol to stop Trillian.
Quote this comment #2.3 Posted by macrosslover on 05 Jan 2004 - 19:01
to my knowledge, so did yahoo and aol at some point. i can understand all of their reasoning for doing it, doesn't make it right, but i can understand it.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by chilliadus on 05 Jan 2004 - 08:34
I hope MS won't make the battery, ehh, irreplaceable lol.
(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by CrimandEvil on 05 Jan 2004 - 08:40
Screw that. If I wanted to DL music I would use iTunes. I have MSN but I don't use their software it looks like something that I threw up after a week of partying.
Quote this comment #4.1 Posted by slang123 on 05 Jan 2004 - 14:57
ur kidding right? iTunes looks so out of place and tacky. This is a windows OS, it looks cheap on a windows OS they should of thought of something origional. Other than that iTunes is great, but to say the interface is better than MSN messenger is a joke
Quote this comment #4.2 Posted by CrimandEvil on 05 Jan 2004 - 16:29
Messenger? I didn't say anything about messenger hell I don't even use messsenger.
I'm talking about the software MS gives you when you sign up with them. It's a browser, it sucks. I use Firebird, it's great! I use iTunes/Winamp5/two other media programs, not WMP. And what does it being a Windows OS have to do with anything? I like the way iTunes looks and the interface is a hell of alot better then anything MS has put out, hell even my GUI is skinned, Windows still looks like it was beaten with a sack of potatoes.
(5 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by isus on 05 Jan 2004 - 12:38
considering the fact that i only know 2 out of 100 people who even use windows media player, i think ms would have to take great leaps to make wmp more popular than say, winamp 5 or itunes or foobar or whatever it is that someone uses to listen to music.

i mean, it comes with wmp out of the box, why wouldn't more people use it?

because it's not very good.
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by jagedEdge on 05 Jan 2004 - 12:42
Seriously. My dad hates Windows Media Player 9. It wouldn't let him make a simple playlist with songs directly from our server. He had to copy them to his machine and then make the playlist. WMP9 has all this rights-management crap added to it so you can't do a thing.
Quote this comment #5.2 Posted by snippet1 on 05 Jan 2004 - 12:59
There shouldn't be a problem with making a playlist with networked files. DRM can be decativated easily.
Quote this comment #5.3 Posted by Fally on 05 Jan 2004 - 14:28
It can... But why change the way people are used to doing things? Why make it hard? Technology is already complex enough for most people.
Quote this comment #5.4 Posted by darksoul on 05 Jan 2004 - 15:47
can you play itunes songs in winamp?
Quote this comment #5.5 Posted by noll3095 on 05 Jan 2004 - 15:49
How is it hard and how are things changed from the way people are used to? I use WMP all the time and have no trouble using it or my computer inept friends and family.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #6 Posted by nowimnothing on 05 Jan 2004 - 16:00
i'm gonna agree with noll3095... i have some issues with the way some things work in WMP9, but for the most part, it works exactly as i want it to... and i've certainly never had issues adding songs to a playlist from my server or, anything to do with DRM...

edit: doh, this was supposed to be a reply to comment 5...
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