the register is usually quite sceptical about Microsoft goings on however this time it does not seem too bothered.
quote:
HighMAT supports the Windows Media Audio, MP3, JPEG, Windows Media Video, and MPEG4 formats.
and since the whole point seems to be that there are a lot more file formats et c than there used to be, i don't know that this will be windows only. the only hint that that might be the case is that microsoft are involved and they are allegedly pushing for this sort of thing elsewhere too. Fair enough in some people's minds but hardly conclusive.
Secondly, as you lot are saying, how's this going to take off when people can still get normal sony style CD and DVD ROMs? microsoft are just betting that their name alone will be enough to overthrow sony's stranglehold on all currently used media formats. Why do you think records disappeared so fast? Edison Corp owned the patent, similar story with every other non-Sony format that's ever come out. The last one that sony squashed was a phillips digital microcassette format, similar to DAT.
Now while i don't really support a huge monopoly like sony, at least they aren't cunts like microsoft. They publicly said they do not recognise that so called "copy protected CDs" are a valid format, meaning that those "CDs" are not even legally allowed to be referred to as CDs, and that's why you get a lot of people talking about "discs". I think sony, or their loyal public, will give short shrift to this plan lik they did many other upstarts.