Windows Media 9 in Digital Theaters

SpamJunkie writes "Feel like watching new releases in 7.1 surround sound with full digital video? It's coming, not with MPEG 4 but with Windows Media 9. Microsoft announced it is bringing Windows Media 9 to 177 screens in Landmark Theaters."

Don't be the stereotypical Slashdot jackhole

[cscx]

This is screwed up, I don't see how you can respond without even taking three seconds to think about what you are saying. WM9 is actually pretty impressive, but of course you already knew that, right, cause l1NuX r0x0rz!! Right??

Re:Movie goers don't care...

[Hard_Code]

MS is trying to grab the theater so that when on-demand online movie broadcasting (I forget if there is a more specific term...the theaters will just not have to keep the data, it will be pumped to them on demand) comes to theaters, they are all in place to charge fees and licenses and have lock-in.

Hey, isn't it ironic how hollywood sponsored DRM could cut their own throats?

Independent film distribution

[Lechter]

This could be a great boon to the independent film "industry!" As they mention in the article, the costs of getting your movie out to distributers would be much much lower...no more copying and mailing huge film reels to each theater (but no more spliced-in single frames of porn either :-( ). Of course, this would only be the case if the encoding software were similarly inexpensive, and with MS cuddling up to Hollywood for DRM, I don't see this happening.

Perhaps, this will provide the impetus to upgrade to digital projection equipment on which someone will implement an open codec...

Re:Piracy?

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

I'm sure Windows Media 9 has all sorts of DRM protections build in... This is their foot in the door, movie studios want to use it for distrubuting in digital because they dont have to worry about the files getting propagated all over the internet. After their used to that, it won't be long before this is the only format you can get your DVD's in...

Re:Let's give a collective...

[1337_h4x0r]

This is just a way for microsoft to champion their own codec.. this has been done for some time in DLP theaters across the country with MPEG-2 format movies. Star Wars Ep2, Lilo & Stitch, etc etc were shown in digital theaters. Now it's a Microsoft (!) digital theater. Great.

Lower cost to consumer?

[vandelay]

I would hope that the ticket prices do down with the film in digital format. I get a bit upset when $20 doesn't cover a night at the movies.

Re:Piracy?

[deanpole]

Do the theatre operators realize that this strong DRM will cause the movies not to play when they loose network connectivity even though the movie is stored locally on hard disc?

Monopoly aids branding

[Logic Bomb]

I think this a great example of MS using its monopoly leverage to extend its brand (sorry for the buzzwords). They've implemented technology which probably has no real relation to what people do on their home computers -- i.e. it uses special software and hardware -- but are including it under the Windows Media brand to further entrech it in the tech-ignorant public's minds. Unless the theaters are able to go out and buy an off-the-shelf Dell, hook it up to their projection systems and use this content, MS has no business pretending this is just another great use for the same software people already have at home.

Is all from MS so bad? I do wonder...

[vs-Tsoonamy]

... why everyone's against everything coming from Microsoft.
Sure, the company is evil, but now in this case it seems to me that they really "invented" quite a good thing, and why not use their product?
Of course, yeah, we can wait a few months till there is an OSS alternative, but hey, they were first.

I think many people should think over their opinion, because there are just too many stereotypes concerning Microsoft. Most people don't think, because "everything that comes from Microsoft is bad."

They certainly have to be kicked of their monopoly-socket, but we have to allow them as well as any other company to bring their ideas to the market and sell them - with fair methods of course.

Martin

Re:Argh.

[tuffy]

It does not matter that M$ doesn't own a market, the minute they set their eyes on one, the current market leader (weither (sp?) it is a company or an {open} technology) is toast. Think about the state of the OA software market 10+ years ago, web browsers 5 years ago, server market, etc. M$ has the will and the means to conquer any market they want to own. Remember that.

Bullshit. Really. Apache is still beating IIS in market share and always has. The PS2 is still clobbering the X-Box. The PalmOS is still demolishing the PocketPC. WebTV has been toast for some time. Heck, the only places Microsoft *have* been successful are Windows (due to a desktop monopoly), Explorer (due to leveraging the previous monopoly to squash Netscape) and Office (due mostly to locked-in data formats). Outside of the narrowly-defined desktop realm, Microsoft is one vast litany of failures.

"+5 Funny?"

[Overly Critical Guy]

Gee, he mentioned a blue screen of death in an obvious throwaway post meant to garner the positive moderations of click-happy crackheads who are more than happy to send it into the realm of Funny That Is Not simply because it is anti-Microsoft. "blue screens that huge will be awesome to look at!!!!" How clever, insightful, and witty. I haven't seen a blue screen of death since early 2000 and neither have the majority of Slashdot minions, but that doesn't matter because moderators aren't concerned anymore about not being biased. They'll maintain the fictional stigma of blue screens far into the new century, and nobody will know what they're talking about. Many already don't.

I will either be modded down for telling it like it is, someone will post some trite anecdotal evidence they feel justifies the boring and unfunny parent post, or an Anonymous Coward will copy my style as they always do.

April Fools is over...

[Anonymous Coward]

Signing on with an evil megacorporation is good for indie films? Yeah, right. Clue: there are cheaper/free MPEG4 implementations.

Now I'll snicker extra at their snarky anti-Hollywood promos. Hypocrites.

Re:WM9 Is a good codec

[Cuthalion]

I've wittingly sat at one (gone out of my way to see DLP projection) and have been able to tell the difference.

There is no jitter. There is no hairs or dust.

There is inadequate resolution for text. Subtitles and credits looked like they wanted about twice the resolution available. The subtitles were quite readable, just visibly pixelated.

This was at 1000 Van Ness in San Francisco. The movie was Atlantis: The Lost Empire. (I've seen other movies there, but not with subtitles)

If you're at NAB, come see it for yourself

[benwaggoner]

Folks,

I'm on a panel at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention this weekend, as part of their Broadcast Engineering track.

http://www.nab.org/conventions/nab2003/sessionde ta il.asp?id=1201583

I'll be demoing content in a variety of HD formats: RealVideo 9, Windows Media 9, MPEG-4 Simple, MPEG-2 MPEG-4 Advanced Simple, and ACT-L3. It's amazing what you can do with 1280x720 24 fps at 4 Mbits/sec these days.

Re:Let's give a collective...

[Com2Kid]

• You don't really need a trained compressionist, you just need a high enough bitrate.

Because bandwidth costs money aaand. . . .

• much but I'd guess the dividing line for NTSC video is around 5-6 Mbit/sec.

We are talking about resolutions MUCH higher than that. Picture transferring 50 gigabytes VS transferring 40 gigabytes. Now imagine that difference times the hundreds if not thousands of theaters across the nation that would be receiving just that one film in digital format. Multiple this by an even larger number of videos are "streamed on demand" rather than stored locally after being transferred once.

Paying some dude $20 an hour or so to squeeze that extra bit of compression out of the codec all of a sudden becomes well worth it.

Heck, for that matter, just bumping up the bit rate is not always enough. multi-pass VBR encoding kicks ass, as do any of the five gazzilion other new options that keep on appearing in various MPEG4 codecs. If Microsoft wants to truly promote this as a professional standard, then they WILL start adding more and more of the twiddly bits to their compressors, and the movie studios will have to hire somebody who knows exactly how to twiddle those various twiddly bits.

Re:Unconditional Microsoft Hate?

[Kombat]

how it's a monopoly (which, it isn't)

Actually, it is.

Actually, it isn't. The fact that you think the (many) alternatives are too expensive doesn't negate the fact that they exist, and that alone is enough to rebut the accusation that Microsoft is a "monopoly." Does Canjet have an airline monopoly in Canada? I always fly with Canjet. I can't afford to fly with Air Canada, so I guess by your definition, CanJet is a monopoly in Canada. Whatever.

I'd bet there will be a two-minute preview hammering into the minds of the audience how great WM9-based movies are.

I'd take that bet. Movie commercials are very expensive. What on Earth makes you think movie producers will put up with a full two minute ad (your words, not mine) before every one of their shows, without Microsoft front a massive wad of cash? The only analogy I can think of is that occassionally, some movies I see show a 15 second "THX" or "Dolby Digital" promo. Certainly not two minutes.

Stop with the FUD. You sound ignorant.

Re:Argh.

[Arker]

I wouldn't care if it was a microsoft codec, as long as the specification was open or at the very least there were implementations for other operating systems.

Even earlier Microsoft codecs are de-facto open, they're open in that you can download Windows Media for Mac or any of a number of free players that are very cross-platform to access them. WM9 is Windows only, the Mac Windows Media player won't even play it (and this is deliberate MS policy, publically announced) and if anyone reverse engineers it they'll be sued out of existence. That's the objectionable part of this thing, not who made it.

Of course, as a practical matter, it probably doesn't matter too much in this case, because this is aimed at movie theatres - but the point from MS view is publicity, not anything immediately practical. They'll use this as a publicity gain to increase the acceptance of WM9, and for reasons I just explained, that pisses me off, and quite reasonably.

MPEG4 and QT (whatever you meant by that, QT is a wrapper not a codec, mostly used with MPEG4 in fact recently... I suppose you meant Sorensen) are also objectionable, in that they are not at all open, but at the very least they're codecs that you can legally and easily play without buying a particular OS.

Crank up the bitrate.

[Andy Dodd]

DVD in the big screen is a Bad Idea. DVD has a max 720x480 resolution.

That said, it's possible to have high-bitrate (but still compressed) video that looks good on the big screen.

Try watching some 1080i HDTV content. (Like CSI or CSI: Miami). This will look pretty good on the big screen. Especially if you use a "studio master" bitstream, which is often at 40+ megabits/sec as opposed to the 19.2 Mbps of ATSC HD.

Now take that further, and use a better codec, like MPEG-4. With MPEG-4 at 1080p resolution and a high bitrate, you can still have a high compression ratio but have it look excellent on the big screen.

Probably MPEG-4 encoded at HDTV bitrates (19.2 Mbps) would be indistinguishable from pure film.

(BTW, there is already a looming format war over "high definition" DVDs, as HDTV users are beginning to realize that DVD isn't all it's cracked up to be. The two main competing techniques are standard DVD media but with MPEG-4 encoding, and Blu-Ray with MPEG2. There is also DVHS, which supports MPEG-2 at up to 25+ megabits/sec.)

Re:Argh.

[MikeFM]

Correct me if my quick math is wrong but assuming similar compression results wouldn't that make a movie that results in a 4Gb movie at normal DVD quality something like 64Gb? If so that really isn't all that large. It could easily be moved around on a stack of DVD's or a hdd (or beamed by sat as someone mentioned).