Wharton Tech Blog

The Register reports that 3G phone standards organization has adopted HE-AAC format for streaming audio to mobile phones. After the DVD Forum adopted this format for audio in the new HD DVD media, this brings a loss for Microsoft in the platform adoption battle for the future digital media. The HE-AAC is a slight modification of the AAC format used in Apple’s iTunes songs that has increased efficiency. This means we have a 2-jockey horse when it comes to HD DVDs with Microsoft ruling the video stream with the WMV 9 format and Dolby rulling the audio stream. This poses interesting challenges for the makers of HD DVDs. Given how retardedly difficult it is to assemble DVDs today (it’s actually easy with today’s software, but the format and files are unnecessarily convoluted), it beats me why these minor decisions are made. This could be intentional by the DVD Forum to prevent a single vendor (ie Microsoft or Apple) from rulling the HD DVD format stream and collecting exhorbitant fees later on. I have my own doubts as to the viability of the HD DVDs when they start coming out but I’d be interested in comments.

The decision by the 3G companies to adopt the HE AAC format in mobile phone puts Apple’s iTunes store in the driver seat for the future of digital audio. If you can imagine that the future generation iPod will be a wireless device, one can but instantly songs from iTunes and have them streamed to their iPods. You need a high speed wireless connection granted, but this isn’t far off in some countries. Maybe we’ll get rid of multiple audio devices finally and have high quality audio collection of our own available everywhere. This scenario may work only if the current DRM schemes survive a technology upgrade cycle, hi speed wireless is readily available, and the record companies continue to support more artists through digital distribution. Any comments on this?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 29th, 2004 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Consumer Tech/Digital Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.