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Music Media

SDMI as Dead As DivX 206

Posted by CmdrTaco from the say-bye-bye dept.
Anonymous Cowpie writes "Rival predicts death for SDMI - Bob Kohn, chairman of EMusic, says SDMI's new spec won't dislodge MP3. He also says "In a year's time, the SDMI standard will suffer the same demise as Divx. The standard war is over today."" Fine by me. Wouldn't have had SDMI on Linux for years anyway, and my MP3 collection isn't going anywhere.
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SDMI as Dead As DivX More

SDMI as Dead As DivX

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  • Ever heard of uuencoding? there won't be any binaries to strip if you uuencode. Just a thought.
  • The SDMI strategy, as well as I can understand it, is to get SDMI included in all the new MP3 players -- the new Rios and whatever. So of course, people are going to want to buy the player that supports the new "official" format. I mean, it still supports MP3.

    But then they will have some kind of a self-destruct device installed for the MP3 part, so that when you upgrade to "SDMI Phase-II", MP3s no longer play.

    I have no idea why any developer would want to include SDMI in their player, especially if they are marketing it as an MP3 player. I guess we'll have to read the fine print. Something along the lines of:

    *MP3 files will not be compatible with this player after 6/7/00

    Anyway, that's the plan, as far as I can tell. It would be a decent strategy, except for the fact that nobody but the RIAA wants SDMI.

  • And even if SDMI starts pressing onward, who's to say I can't rip my CDs into MP3 files? The ripper will still work. The players will still work.

    Are you sure? My understanding of "Phase 2" of SDMI is that in 2005 you're going to walk into a music store where they sell CDs, buy a CD, take it home, and your old 1999 CD Player from 1999 won't be able to play it because it's scrambled like DVD. Try to rip it, and you'll get binary snow. You'll have to analog-sample it, probably by holding a old microphone from 1999 up to the SDMI speakers.

  • You didn't quite read what the guy said, he said MTV controls what we listen too. I think he mostly meant what is considered mainstream/popular.. which sad to say they really do. Then he went on to imply that he hopes MTV becomes obsolete, I assume by the internet.

    BTW is that walkindude.. as in The Stand?
  • Try to implant mp3 players directly into browsers and replace midi, midi sucks anyway.

    Um. Right. I think I'll go try to plug an MP3 file into my digital keyboard now. Then when the keyboard starts making all kinds of horrible noises and the neighbors complain, I'll tell them whose idea it was.
    --
  • I wouldn't even worry about SDMI. Wasn't there a short lived vqf (vqx) or something like that?
    There's a whole lot that contributes to .mp3's success; small sized files, music on (your) demand by just choosing to play it, no need to rewind, no need to change MANY different CD's, no need for a CD disc changer (unless there is a 200+ CDR disc changer, damn! 2400+ hours of music!), portability, easy duplication, and of course, just the fact that you can get something for free. There are a lot more reasons why .mp3's are so successful on top of these. What the record industry has to realize is that they should stop selling us music at ridiculous prices. My suggestion for them is to drop the prices, add more extra features to each album/single, and to realize when they've lost.
    $20+ for an import CD? Screw that. Most of the import albums that are selling have 1 or 2 new songs/mixes that I can really live without IF I have to pay this much for the disc. If I see it available to download for free, hell yeah. Come to me baby. Now if I saw the same CD selling for less than 10 bucks, I really would consider just buying it instead of downloading it. Now don't get me wrong, I support the artists and the fact that they should get paid for their talent, but the recording labels make it very, very difficult for me to give the ARTISTS what they deserve. I used to get really fed up with the rectangular, cardboard boxes that CD's first came in, but hey, at least that was a 'little' something extra. Give us music that can play on CD players that can be read from movie files containing the videos for the songs and maybe even interviews, and heck, I'm all for the $13.99 price....but not a penny more.

  • To clear up some things (Score:3)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@@@gmail...com> on Thursday July 08, 1999 @07:20PM (#1812404) Journal
    It seems many people have a misconception of what SDMI is..
    From what I've figure out SDMI is more of a watermarking technology, meaning all new CD's and online music will be watermarked with SDMI (note there is a difference between this and encrypting of scrambling (spelling?) old CD players will be able to play this SDMI music (though if you play it backwards and really slowly you will hear a voice in the backgroud saying "do noot copy.. or satin will have your soul" accually this is fairly accuarate except its a binary message for the computer to read instead of you). Even if Ripped from CD to MP3 this watermark will most likly still be there. The important difference comes in the players. The players that support watermarking /SDMI will follow the rules and will only play first generation copies or something like that (I kinda forget how these rules work or how they are digitally enforced). Now somehow the RIAA has got to force all players to support the SDMI standard, which they may just do, suppositivly the new RIO'S will use SDMI as will most other players, possibly even winamp. So if we want to fight this initiative we need to start using and supporting players that do not care about SDMI, most of these will oviously be linux/free(not beer nessesarly)/GPL software.
  • My ISP carries all those alt.binaries.* pr0n newsgroups, and it seems to mean that at least somebody on the administration staff likes them, which means they are around to stay. In any case, it won't become irrelevant because the people who run ISPs still read newsgroups (I'm hoping). So nothing is going anywhere, I'm pretty sure.
  • So what about VQF? Didn't VQF have better sound quality, compress faster, and smaller file sizes (so I heard)? Sure, you had to pay for a VQF player, but you're probably going to have to pay for an SDMI player too.

    Actually, you can go over to VQF.com [vqf.com] and download a client binary for free (encoders as well). Good quality, smaller file sizes, good for modem-rate streaming too. The problem with its widespread adoption seems to be Yamaha's lack of haste in finishing and promoting it (they seem to be blissfully ignorant of the concept of "internet time"). And, of course, they still have the ever-popular "What's a Linux?" attitude, when last I checked.

    --

  • Nothing like a good business tack to get the juices flowing. My question is why everything has to be reduced to petty business interests. I say have everyone just have little recorders attatched to their lapels and send a group of oh? about 10-15 pre-arranged people into concerts to be at various locations. Then have all the data that the recorders use be uploaded into high capacity lines in a foreign country. Then take all the data that is similar to each other and merge it into a spanking new sound and release it. 100% clear. and works 100% of the time.

    And here's the kicker there's not one thing anyone could do about it. No one can track several hundred people from across the USA or any other country at all.
  • Answers

    1. No although I have used them before on machines with sound cards quite nice and beats having to purtchess a CD

    2. Well it just might slow down replication a bit due to some problems getting past the encryption although nothing a little good programing can't solve.
  • Yeah "Neptune" like the planet. Cold, sterile, and totally unhospitible to and form of life quite fitting? huh?
  • That's the basic gist of SDMI, instead of moving to a very low cost wide open distribution model. Those in power of music want to keep it that way. The RIAA is all about maintaining a monopoly (split 5 ways). They will try to convince people that listening to MP3 is theft, and charging $15 for a CD isn't.
    Their last thought is about how to expose the most number of people to an artists work, instead trying to get the highest return per listener. Big business and art shouldn't mix.
    I see a veritable battle brewing and I'd like to think that enough people will learn of the evils of controlling information (Secure DMI) do nothing but limit the choices of consumers (see M$, Catholic Church).
    Beware, AOL already owns winamp and shoutcast. Someone else (don't remeber who, but a big media guy) owns MP3Spy and GameSpy. If AOL joins the SDMI (and they want to play with the big boys) then WinAmp will soon check your MP3's before they play. Watch the legislation, making free things illegal is a great way to charge for them.
    It's really an us vs. them battle. Consumers vs. Business. Who wins in the Free Market.....we shall see.
    Stay Alert, Stay Alive, Stay FREE
  • Right on even if that were your real address you could just deny everything. Without solid proof of any illegal activity not even the eff bee eiii or the NSA could stop you.

    Interesting Image:

    CFG Spender from Xfiles (Smoking Man)
    *knocks on door*
    Mr/Miss/Mz/Mrs blah I believe we need a word with you. *snaps fingers*
    ....

    3 days later the body is turned up in a field in Montana?

    Not much of a chance but I guess it could happen if the govt wanted to stop anyone.
  • I understand that both DVDs and this new SDMI format use some sort of encryption. But, as we have seen, seemingly unbreakable encryption schemes have been broken by the likes of distributed.net. I really don't know the technical details of the encryption schemes used by DVDs and SDMI, but, given Moore's law, how long will it be before we can decrypt these files in a reasonable amount of time on an ordinary computer? We're only a few months away from 1 GHz Alpha processors, remember, and only a year or two (hopefully) from a "reprogrammable" Transmeta chip that could theoretically be reprogrammed to just crack codes. So I am asking those of you with any sort of knowledge about cryptography and specifically the encryption scheme used by DVDs and SDMI what the outlook is.
  • UMM I'm pretty sure that they meant endorced as in a proper copy. Like the artist endorces your CD but not that copy you burnt and gave to your friend.

  • problem: (Score:3)

    by ywwg ( 20925 ) on Thursday July 08, 1999 @12:22PM (#1812418) Homepage
    corporations don't support mp3 like they did for DVD. Thus, SDMI has no _real_ entrenched competitor. Also, even DVD had Macrovision, and basic encryption, so studios could rest easy that no one would hax0r (crax0r?) filez off of dvds and post them. mp3 has no such feature. I think SDMI will win, but they will learn from divx's mistake.

    (first?)

  • Heh. Consider some of the dumb things Joe Consumer is known for doing. The market consists of the kind of people who, upon receiving document in Word97 format, buys a new version of MS Office, a new version of Windows, and a new computer that is fast enough to run it. Sad but true.

  • And neither will the MP3 format. However, those of you who were around back then, cast your minds back to when SEA was pushing the ARC compression format, and PK was pushing ZIP. Lots of folks on the ARC side thought that ARC would never be supplanted--it was too firmly entrenched. Everybody was using it, like everywhere. All the BBS'es all over the world were crammed with ARC files. Then almost overnight, ZIP was what you had to have. ARC isn't exactly dead, but when you go to compress a file these days, is it your first choice? And what would have happened back then if someone had said the word "bz2"?

    So MP3 will last just as long as it's the best choice. As soon as something demonstrably better comes along, it will be pushed aside like a used plate at dinner. But be aware, "better" doesn't just mean clearer sound, or better compression, or freer code--it's a set of factors that must all come together at once. Can I predict them? Worse luck--I was one of those convinced that ZIP would never fly. So don't listen to me--use your own lessons from history.

    More code to write, see you fine folks later.

  • Head of SDMI is against privacy?? (Score:5)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Thursday July 08, 1999 @12:24PM (#1812421) Homepage Journal
    This also scares me. In a Wired interview [wired.com], Leonardo Chiariglione, the head of the SDMI initiate, said:

    "Why all of sudden has the United States become so concerned with privacy? Privacy was never a concern before the Web."

    We have always been concerned about privacy. It is more along the lines of "Why are there suddenly so many privacy invasions and disregard for everyones basic want for privacy?"

  • Yup... from the Joe SixPack perspective DVD is copy protected by Macrovision. CSS (until it gets cracked, if that ever happens) prevents even techies from copying DVD's onto DVD RAM disks (which are currently more expensive anyway.)

    However, DVD's copy protection schemes are basically user-transparent, and Macrovision is accepted (or at least tolerated) by VHS users anyway. It dosen't get in the way of Fair Use like That Other Format did.

    Now, if SDMI's copy protection is NOT user-transparent a lot of people will complain. If you get enough of those ppl together the format is gonna have a REALLY tough time. (Among techies MP3 is a mostly-open format with no protection, and that's what /.ers are gonna insist on. :)

  • The suit gods fail to see that mp3's main attractor is the fact that it's free. Sure, it sounds decently like a CD (not audiophine herion, but a very good sound) And it's small, another plus. But we could always just hurl huge files in other formats around. Would you like other formats, say wave, to cost anything? I don't think so.


    Unless they were to keep every person from ripping the track they love from the CD, or from exchanging files in a format that's not prohibited in any manner, it'll never happen.


    Besides, it's just a watermark, embedded signature in the data. Given enough time I'm sure it can easily be bypassed. Like sticking a needle in a haystack, you're bound to find it eventually.


    Sure the mp3 standard will die someday, as all standards do. But the idea of giving the public a pay alternative is kind of nuts. That's like throwing a pair of knitting needles at a junkie and hoping they take up that and kick the habbit.


    (sarcasm)


    Yep, that's all we need, we can kill this pesky open source software thing like that too! Just throw a pay "fake-standard" at em and hope they jump onboard. Then again, Microsoft's been doing it for years..


  • All that matters now is the artists, the recording engineer, and MTV. The artists to make the music, the engineer to make it sound good, and MTV to tell us what to listen to. The record companies are totally irrevelant. Hopefully soon MTV will join them.
  • The suit gods fail to see that mp3's main attractor is the fact that it's free. Sure, it sounds decently like a CD (not audiophine herion, but a very good sound) And it's small, another plus. But we could always just hurl huge files in other formats around. Would you like other formats, say wave, to cost anything? I don't think so.


    Unless they were to keep every person from ripping the track they love from the CD, or from exchanging files in a format that's not prohibited in any manner, it'll never happen.


    Besides, it's just a watermark, embedded signature in the data. Given enough time I'm sure it can easily be bypassed. Like sticking a needle in a haystack, you're bound to find it eventually.


    Sure the mp3 standard will die someday, as all standards do. But the idea of giving the public a pay alternative is kind of nuts. That's like throwing a pair of knitting needles at a junkie and hoping they take up that and kick the habbit.


    (sarcasm)


    Yep, that's all we need, we can kill this pesky open source software thing like that too! Just throw a pay "fake-standard" at em and hope they jump onboard. Then again, Microsoft's been doing it for years..


  • It cracks me up to here music execs talk about SDMI will be the "death knell" for MP3. After SDMI is finalized, they will likely go through and try to kill anybody who is distributing the unblessed MP3 files. So let's assume for the moment that they manage to pull this off. Is MP3 dead??? HAHAHAHA! Not!

    What about Usenet? People post MP3's to Usenet, and since there are a number of Usenet servers that don't track who posts to them, how are you going to go after the people.

    What about IRC? Does anybody ever log IRC??? So we have yet another distribution mechanism that is untouchable by the RIAA.

    ---

  • pardon the typo, there is no such thing as an "audiophine" at least not that I know of. (I meant, audiophile)

  • Otherwise we'd all be paying cash for everything, and not get discount cards. And NOBODY would be a Costco member :)

  • If you are so concerned about MP3 quality, just use a higher kbps setting. I do mine at 256 kbps then burn them to a CD. Excellent quality, and far less CDs to deal with... Besides, SDMI is just a proprietary standard attached to the compression scheme. No benefits, just added size of the data, and who knows what else.

  • what matters most to consumers... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Consumers these days fall into a couple categories: high-end consumers, collectors, joe-consumer, and those with ethical agendas.

    Let's reorder these:

    Joe Consumer

    This guy cares mostly about two things: widespread use and low price. Ease of use would be another plus. Joe-consumer also makes up the largest portion of the market. By widespread use, I mean - how versatile is the thing. Can his VCR play all the latest movies? Can his OS play all the latest games and are all his friends using these? VHS and Windows became market-dominant because of Joe Consumer.

    High-end consumers

    These people drive their purchases based on quality. Money is often not a significant factor. These people jumped on the laser disc format early. They probably owned the first CD players which were horribly expensive. They also represent a much smaller chunk of the market than Joe Consumer.

    Collectors

    They want market items true to their original form, which hold their value, or represent a rarity. A collector would want something that preserved quality (i.e. if a tape format provided slightly better quality than a CD, he would still probably go for the CD because it is longer-lived).

    People with ethical agendas

    Alot of the Slashdot crowd falls in here. They want open source, even if it sacrifices quality sometimes. This ethical agenda could be totally off the wall though. For example, not buying Ben & Jerry's ice cream because you support the NRA and you know that they are vivid anti-gun lobbyists. Although you like their ice cream, you refuse to buy it.


    So, with SDMI, I believe this article is totally off base. I truly wish MP3 would hang on as THE standard. But I fear it will not because:

    - SDMI will get the titles. Just as VHS did, SDMI will garner the support of the artists because their labels will not allow them to support anything else. (score 1 for Joe Consumer)

    - SDMI will probably have quality. Microsoft's new format really does have better quality that MP3. I didn't believe it until I tried it. Both on low and high bitrate streams, too. (score 1 for high-end consumers and collectors).

    - SDMI offers copyright protection. (score 1 for collectors).

    - SDMI won't be free. (score -1 for ethical agendas)

    - SDMI is coming on the scene late. (score -1 for high-end consumers who already have a large amount of time vested in MP3 collections)


    Will SDMI win? I believe it will at least get a strong foothold because Joe Consumer drives a large portion of the market. But I'd love to hear discussion and see what people think of my points above.

    - Speed
  • it's beacuse while the web (and the net) open up vast posiblities to is users, it also opens up vast posiblities to violate privacy. On the web, privacy needs to be protected more then it does in 'meat space'
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • actualy, I was readin in the latest issue of roling stone that most *artists* arn't aganst MP3s. when was the last time you hear an *artist* come out against MP3? i don't think I ever have. Its beacuse the record companys gett all the $$$, for the artiest *most* of the money comes from ticket sales, not records.

    infact its the exact reverce of what you are describing, only the largest bands make money off records.
    next time get your facts straight before posting.
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • However there is one thing about Joe Consumer that most people can't understand. He is real scared of the "hackers" on the internet stealing CC# info and making purtchesses of all sorts of things. Most people are NOT on the internet and of those few most will not make finicial transactions over it anyway
  • ..
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • This guy isn't really in a position to make such a claim. He seems to be making this statement in hopes that he gets his way.

    But the people who create the music are the ones who decide in what format that music is distributed.

    And then to top it off, if the music creators can convince Congress to extend the Copyright law to extend beyond music recording devices to cover MP3... the war is lost.

  • Unless I'm completely off my rocker (which has been known to happen from time to time), MP3 has pretty decent corporate support considering its primary use. With Diamond and Nullsoft (not much of a corporation really) both having portable MP3 players, it seems to me that the MP3 format has got at least *some* support. Of course, I probably sound like the owners of Betamax's back in the 80's.

    *shrug*

    - coug

  • Why mp3 will go the way of DIVX (and other four letter acronyms such as the DODO):
    First, it was developed without the input of the target community. Not only is it attempting to dislodge a beloved standard firmly entrenched, it was developed behind closed doors. The people that really know wtf is up will never embrace some arbitrary, overbearing standard decreed by some faceless association. Those same people are the ones with T1/cable access who collect these files and manage the ftp servers.
    Secondly, it is not a "nuetral" format as described by the chairman of SDML. It is in fact an aggressive security wrapper. I read an interview on WIRED where he talked about how it's security info was inconsequential to people like you and me. He claimed that although it does actively collect device, system and personal info on the user performing the encoding operation, the ordinary user would not be talented nor interested enough to decipher the data. Bullshat, give me an hour...

    I could go on, but. This same chairman then goes on to explain that he feels file formats should be 'agnostic', that's when I quit reading... Check out the URL http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/2060 1.html
  • Thanks! That is very interesting (and scary as hell!)

  • You didnt have to pay for a VQF player.. get kjofol at kjofol.org [kjofol.org] it think..it does mp3 and vqf...
    Standards do get entrenched - go search for mp3s there are millions out there and millions coming... It is like the qwerty keyboard - it may suck but everyone uses it so hey, lets use it too. Kinda like WinBloze maybe.
  • Excactly, SDMI is a securityu 'wrapper'. Any format can exist underneath, .wav, .mp3, whatever... But they can't encrypt CD's without facking up backwards compatibility. The only time that the watermarks (is that even really the correct term?) come into play is when you encode it with an SDMI compliant encoder. An mp3 player will not give a shat about the security placed for SDMI.
  • technology is like a roaring freight train with no brakes. Once a technology is out and accepted, there is no going back. and unless something better than MP3 comes out (and SDMI aint it), than MP3 isnt going anywhere.

    When will corperations realize that music is art and deserves to be free? Look at great groups like phish and the grateful dead that actually encouraged bootlegging and recording at concerts and because of that their music lives on and will live on forever.

    my 2 cents

    -Z
  • Cd's will be no different than from before. You cannot add some new encryption without screwing up backwards compatibility with millions of CD player in existence. SDMI is only a tag placed within the track. You can still encode it in the same manner we always have. The 'watermark' only comes into play when it is encoded with a SDMI compliant app. It restricts the file to certain devices or certain access instances. It is bullshat and will, eventually, eat itself. no worries.
  • Yeah, I loved how he proclaimed SDMI's info gathering as nuetral and how no one would be interested in extracting the data. Give me a half hour, I can tell you when, by what program, what device and who knows wtf else the file was encoded on. Did you listen to that jackas. I especially loved it when he proclaimed that file formats should be agnostic, that was when I quit reading, priceless... Personally, I prefer my files orthodox.
  • When I first heard about DIVX I laughed at the person for being scared of it. I knew that even if all of the movie industry took to crusade for it that the computer industry would destroy it as being a silly idea, if it didn't die do to lack of support. Well it died due to lack of support, but it was the idea that it wouldn't survive. This may seem similar but it really isn't.
    Right now the major supporters of mp3 are a large relatively unorganized group of people. I don't think any major corporation is going to champion the mp3 because they know that they will get the daylights sued out of them. There is a lot of support from the music industry because they know that if they don't do something they are screwed.

    On a dual sided, dual layered DVD using mp3 compression such that it is roughly 1.5 megs per minute you can get ~190 HOURS worth of music. That is nearly 8 DAYS of continuously playing music. At 1 meg a minute it comes out to ~283 hours, or nearly 12 days. On a single sided single layer DVD with 1.5 meg/min it is still ~45 hours of play time, or ~67 hours at 1 meg/min. They are scared of that. The movie industry will still survive quite easily because they still sell tickets at movie theaters. With the introduction of online radio, and DVD burners the music industry WILL die. They know that, they aren't dumb. They have a lot of money and they will fight mp3 full force.

    If you want to keep mp3 alive then don't take this threat too lightly mp3 may be entrenched but it is not invicible. WE are the people who have to fight this one, because no one else will.

    If mp3 could be turned into the sound file for Linux we would have more leverage. Kill .wav's, kill .au, kill midi, and replace with mp3. Try to implant mp3 players directly into browsers and replace midi, midi sucks anyway. Send e-mail as attached mp3's, even if you have to use a crappy speak and spell type device on you computer.
    That is how we will win. Scoffing will do nothing!
  • 1. Is there some sort of tool that allows music to be converted to pulses or notes on various frequencies on a pc speaker. Like row, row, row your boat. I am aware of the pc speaker patch for linux however it is really crappy compared to simply representing the music as notes. There are two ways to get sound out of the PC speaker, witch can be ether 'on' or 'off' The first is simply 1-bit which sounds pretty bad.
    the other way is to modulate the pulses at a very high rate, so that they change faster then teh speaker can move, so each change only moves the speaker a little bit.

    I once found a pretty cool DOS demo that did this, it was pretty cool.

    None of this stuff is anything that you could do without doing assembly coding yourself though.. I don't know about any linux libs
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Isn't Diamond in the process of being sued over their portable mp3 player?

  • I think it's actually going to be pretty easy to break, because this is scrambling rather than encryption. In encryption, if you think someone has cracked your IDEA-128 key, you just pick a new key, and they have to start all over again in trying to crack you. But once SDMI stuff gets deployed, the "key" will never be able to change. (Not unless they "pull a Divx" and require access to your CD player so they can update its key list.) So the key is a set-in-stone constant. It's security through obscurity.

    A distributed.net project might be a good idea if the algorithm itself is guessed, but I think it's more likely that if the algorithm gets out, it'll be due to a NDA leak rather than a guess. If there's a leak, the key will get out too.

    I think a distributed.net project to crack DVD scrambling would be a good idea, but let's wait until after SDMI is deployed, so that it will be too late for the SDMI architects to learn any lessons. :-)

  • The problem with SDMI is simply one of Mathematics, not of consumer rights or privacy or the big bloated music industry. In an information age, what can and can't be done with information is controlled by math and only math. I can send a private letter to you because encryption is mathematically possible and explored, but you cannot send me a file that I can only read 3 times. Controlling information like that is simply not possible (short of implanting a chip into everybody's brain).

    So, with Mathematics against it, formats like this have to rely on proprietary closed systems, control over hardware, and legal methods to keep us from cracking them right open.

    That is the problem.
  • oh I forgot theres a program called 'fasttracker' for dos that lets you play .xm files though the speaker. I used to have a large colection of them, they can sound as good as an mp3(these are 100% "computer" music though, you would have to recompose somthing in order to have it playable, you can't 'encode')
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Many of your arguments hinge on the claim that MP3's are better for the consumer on nearly every level: technological, economic, etc, etc, etc. But makes no difference.

    Others correctly appeal to the "entrenchedness" of MP3's. This is a better argument--but it is here that we lose.

    MP3's are entrenched, but only on the Internet. By far far far the vast majority of music is not Internet-delivered MP3's, it is RIAA-controlled media (CDs and whatnot). Also the vast majority of the market is not able to take delivery of Internet MP3's (because they are not connected, connected by a 28.8, or just plain unaware of the technology).

    What this means is that the RIAA can saturate the non-MP3-using-Internet-geek market with SDMI.

    Only two things can save us:
    • Not caring: As with Linux, do your own thing. You can still record MP3's via audio output and trade them with your friends. The downsides are that MP3's won't be a "recognized standard" and someone will have to be the sacrificial lamb that makes the first copy.
    • Educate the masses: I think this is probably what killed DIVX. Geeks are in the minority numerically, but for some issues they can wield majority power. They do this by being the local "guru" for family, friends etc. These friends as the geek "So, what do you think about SDMI?" If that geek say "forget about it", he is wielding two votes at once--one his own, and one his friend's.

    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • SDMI will fail for exactly the same reasons MP3 in general has flourished: People want a high quality, OPEN digital music format.

    It has been said that MP3 is already dead. That new compression formats are about to enter the fray that will lure users from MP3 to something new. Well I certainly hope so! Sure MP3 is great, but we ALL want MORE dont we?

    However no format will overtake MP3 unless its every bit as OPEN as MP3 is. Sure people want smaller files, but this need is diminishing as bandwidth restrictions go the way of the .au file and hard drives grow. If a format is more rrestrictive but smaller than MP3 and i have a 300k connection, I'll just spend the few extra seconds to get the MP3. This has been one of those wonderfull occassions when the _people_ actually get what they want.

    The RIAA has lost this time. And im sure that now (as the end draws closer) they see the error in their ways. Had they reacted in the beggining, had the forseen the coming onslaught, had they actually done something similar to SDMI 3 years ago it might have actually worked....and the recording industry would have kept their tight grip on music distribution for another few years.

    SDMI will fail for another, more basic, reason: It is too little, too late.
  • wtf, I hate to flame, but..

    you are as dumb as a sack of hammers. Quit encoding at 128 KB/s or buy some decent facking speakers. I encode everytning at a minimum of 160KB/s, usually higher, the quality of the sound continues to amaze me. I get sound quality that rivals CD raw at 1/8 to 1/12 compression ratio. Open your eyes, boy.

    MP3 isn't established. I hate to do it, but, MORON! Compression formats are quite standard, even the ones that should be scrapped. MP3 stands for MPEG, layer 3. I will garuntee that MPEG will be around in five years, in whatever incarnation. I am reasonably certain that it will exist in ten years. Look at zip files/tar files; old school. MPEG, and to a lesser extent quicktime, are their equivalent in the day of multimedia.

    One word of advice, think before post.
  • What? MTV? Do they play music? I thought it was the "Real World" channel.

    Lotek---

  • you could patch your kernel so your sound driver writes the samples to a file. Or just delete /dev/dsp and put a fifo there.
  • Well, MP4, MP5 and MPn are basically the evolution of MP3. Obviously there will be further research, development and better quality in versions to come..
    But it will always be an open standard, and we will continue to use it.

    Markus

  • If my rio can play these files, fine.. If not, well screw that. I can continue to encode in mp3. There'll always be a converter, even if I have to go from a new format, to wav, to mp3. I am sure I'm not the only person on earth who is happy with the format, and who has the technology to use it, so why not?
  • Umm actually, I have no idea where you pulled that from. The FBI and NSA wouldn't waste their resources on monitoring a medium they have no control over.
    No, they will not prosecute you for anything you do on IRC. They don't even monitor. The IRC network admins definately would not give them authorization to.
  • Sounds very ominous... what does he mean by "licenced"? Presumably "cryptographically signed as licenced by a means controlled by the RIAA".

    I.e., if you're an independent artist and want to put MP3s on the web, you either tithe to the RIAA and Big 5 and get your MP3s signed (for a fee), or you are branded as a pirate, and your site is automatically shut down.

    As a creator and consumer of non-label music, this worries me.
  • I almost positive that there is a plugin for winamp and wplay (two players i wish would emerge on non windows platforms)
    that allows you to play vqf
  • This got a two?????

    I understand that both DVDs and this new SDMI format use some sort of encryption.

    Well, thanks for clearing that up.

    . But, as we have seen, seemingly unbreakable encryption schemes have been broken by the likes of distributed.net.

    No they haven't. Distributed.net just showed how long it takes to break certain types of encryption, none of which ever claimed to be unbreakable.

    I really don't know the technical details of the encryption schemes used by DVDs and SDMI, but, given Moore's law, how long will it be before we can decrypt these files in a reasonable amount of time on an ordinary computer?

    Answer: a damn long time.

    We're only a few months away from 1 GHz Alpha processors, remember, and only a year or two (hopefully) from a "reprogrammable" Transmeta chip that could theoretically be reprogrammed to just crack codes.

    And a 1Gz Alpha, is what? 2 to 3 times faster than your current box. Now you've gone from 24 years to 8 years. Oh, and your talking out of your ass about the Transmeta "reprogrammable" chip to boot...



  • People have already proven that a better product has not always grown to a general used standard.
    For example, take os/2 from IBM. U certainly wont deny that it is better than windows, but it was no succes because MS is just all around.
    Take VQF, ever heard of ?
    It is smaller than MP3, it gives you a better quality, but it never got as big as MP3. Why ? There where not enough songs in VQF (you can find MP3's everywhere).

    For now, I stick to MP3, if someone decides an other standard is better, and the songs are widly available in that standard, I will probably switch over (but I will always keep my current collection).
    Thank you :)


    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    Belgium HyperBanner
    http://belgium.hyperbanner.net

  • Well, first point is to your idea about free books... It's already happened, mostly.

    Project Gutenburg [promo.net]

    And to make a new thread or first post, there's a bar underneath the story segment. You should see a drop box for score:posts, threading or not and order, then buttons "Change" and "Reply". The "Reply" button starts a new thread. Changing the subject does not.
    ~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
    "Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"

  • Wrong. Take Windows 95 (Pre- MS Media Player (new edition), and some early releases of Windows 98 (same thing). These OS's DID NOT support MP3 with their media players. So, what happened? In comes WinAmp, in comes a few other companies, and boom, you have MP3 support WITHOUT Microsoft's support.

    When (IF) Windows 2000 Media Player decides to drop the MP3 support, what will happen? Will WinAmp suddenly go out of business? Will the rest of the MP3 supporters go out of business, just because Microsoft doesn't support it? Nope. For proof, see the beginning of this article.
  • Your probably hearing the stuff in the attic being chopped. (Which if the sampled properly don't need to cut off) I haven't analyzed the output of the franhoff (sp) encoder so I don't know how that one does. I can barely hear the diffrence between the wav and mp3 so I would need a plotter to see the diffrence :)
  • One thing in all this arguement about SDMI versus MP3 has missed is this: SDMI data compression will most likely benefit from knowledge of how to do better digital compression of high-fidelity audio gained in the years since MP3 was released.

    In short, it's very possible that SDMI-encoded files will offer superior sound quality AND will require less disk storage than MP3 files. That plus the fact every record company is behind the technology means that SDMI will make fairly substantial inroads in the online music market, whether we like it or not.
  • SMDI == DIVX I think you mean SMDI is equivelent to DIVX not SMDI get the valud of DIVX. At least in C syntax.
  • Those percentages (crude as they are :) )don't work for the World, they work pretty much only for the States. I'm sure that the vast majority of, say, India or Africa doesn't listen to music that comes from the major record labels. Thats what, 1.5 Billion people right there? Just a thought.


    ..................................@ @
  • They got off, the RIAA tried to say that they violated a "Recorded Music" act or some such, and the judge said, nope, they just play it.
    Everytime I hear the RIAA say they aren't against MP3 I start laughing. If they aren't lying (which I seriously doubt) then they're stupid. Very few powerful business men are stupid, the vast majority of them are great liars.

    (not to stereotype business men, but c'mon, would YOU lie for $5 bil.?)
  • Oh, pardon me, but you forgot that the largest music-listening audience is teens.

    Without cash.

    They're the ones who are using MP3, not Joe Six-Pak. They're the ones the RIAA can't convince to buy CDs.

    And they like the PRICE of MP3.


    Will in Seattle
  • nope:

    SMDI = DIVX

    (I use Pascal, ok?! :-)


    --------------------------------
  • Not that it makes any difference in the final percentage or the point you're making, but you might want to replace the term "Earth" with something like "industrialized countries of the world" and adjust the numbers accordingly. Start with, say, 2 billion instead of six billion.

    It just bugs me when people assume that North America/Western Europe/Japan etc. is in any way representative of the way the vast majority of people on this planet live.

  • actualy, I was readin in the latest issue of roling stone that most *artists* arn't aganst MP3s. when was the last time you hear an *artist* come out against MP3? i don't think I ever have. Its beacuse the record companys gett all the $$$, for the artiest *most* of the money comes from ticket sales, not records.

    infact its the exact reverce of what you are describing, only the largest bands make money off records. next time get your facts straight before posting.

    As someone else pointed out, if they're in Rolling Stone, they're one of the brand names to which I referred -- they have a vested interest in the humongous revenue streams that a big label provides them, via promotion, even if the royalty deal could be better. If they're for MP3, fine, but I don't think they're in favor of the business model the previous poster outlined (go take a look). They're no doubt in favor of the free-MP3-as-promotional-single angle; they're no doubt in favor of the MP3-as-free-publicity angle, especially if their career has stalled. But they still expect their royalties, whether from Big Brother or from a New Deal, whether from CD, DVD, MP*, or whatever.

    But I wasn't really referring to them, anyway.

    OK?

    --

  • I'm not pretending I know what I'm talking about, but I thought MPEG layer 4 (MP4) was some sort of mix of video and audio?
  • Are we just 1% of the population?
    Only people I know that don't take advantage of the fact that they can get free, CD-Quality music, are those that just dont know about it, don't have access to it, or have the money to throw around to pay for it. If we are such a small minority, why are these distributors and artists so threatened by us?

    oh, and those mp3 players kick ass..
  • Microsoft won't be interested. They have their own format that works with their media player. If you look at the media player page, it mentions that diamond is doing a deal with MS to sell portable players similar to their MP3 versions to play this format. It also mentions that there is an option with their format to apply a copy-protection to the media files. If they dont have the technology yet, they will just replicate it with their own proprietry format. Then they'll have the market.
    This is obvious competition to both formats.
  • Trust me, none of my CDs have *any* scratch as well as none of my vinyl records. What you say about properly made CDs may be right, but we wont know until a few years will we? The only ones that I trust will last are the ones using gold as backcoting instead of aluminium.

    However, many of my CDs are not even from this decade as I started out around 1985 lulled in by the hype that they last forever and sound much better, both which aren't true. Now I always buy a vinyl record if I can get my hands on one with music that I like, but it is unfortunately getting more and more expensive and more and more difficult to find a decent quality vinyl record.

  • Joe Sixpack is not driving MP3s (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A lot of you are saying that the MP3 standard will die because Joe Sixpack goes for ease of use and he doesn't really know much about how to use his computer.

    Well Joe Sixpack is not driving the MP3 standard now. Most of the MP3's on the net right now were ripped from CD and encoded in MP3 format, and Joe Sixpack (according to you) does not have the technical proficiency to pull this off. I contented that MP3s ripped off CD will continue to be the biggest source of MP3s on the internet, and they will continue to be readily available, no matter what happens with SDMI.

    Now all Joe Sixpack has to do is download a MP3 player. There are lots of them out there and they're all easy enough for Joe Sixpack to use.

    Microsoft could include a SDMI player and a SDMI player ONLY in their OS and maybe a few people would not go download a MP3 player as well. But at the moment there are millions of MP3s and 0 SDMI format tracks, which is a huge incentive for Joe Sixpack to download a MP3 player. Either way, MP3s will still be here, whether he does or not.
  • Okay, so my CRUDE FIGURES are WAY off. Even if something like 1 million or even around 10 thousand people shows up in the last figure, it's still enough to say that MP3 won't die just because the companies say it will.

    It'll only die because we say it will. And we aren't about to say that yet, are we?
  • cast your minds back to when SEA was pushing the ARC compression format, and PK was pushing ZIP.

    And do you know WHY .ARC died? Because SEA tried to push their weight around using their "IP rights" to stop PK from producing an easier to use program.

  • I'm not an expert.... but as I know:

    MPEG is for multimedia, and supports audio as well as video, but may also be used for only one or the other: there are MPEGs without audio, and (you guess it) MPEGs without video. From version to version the encoding got better. MPEG version 3 (shortly MP3) has an excellent audio compression, so it is used mainly for compression of audio files.

    :-)
    Markus

  • On the web, privacy needs to be protected more then it does in 'meat space'
    Actualy, privacy needs more thought on the web than it does in meat space, not more protection. We are just more used to protecting privacy in meat space. For example, I hardly ever leave my house without wearing pants.

    Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
    Homer
  • Althought Nullsoft isn't much of a corporation, it has AOL's support, and AOL is quite powerful these days, eh?
    ..................................@ @
  • Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.
    ------------------------------
  • replace MTV with Internet and I agree with you (try to think outside your demographic)
  • The business models of "give away the phone, sell the service" and its offshoots are certainly viable for the cellular phone market -- you have no real point in having a phone you can't use. but to adapt this for music? i, and many other people i know, have yet to purchase a shirt with a band's name on it.


    ..................................@ @
  • If I'm an artist, and I set up a web site on which customers can download mp3 (or higher quality successor) files of my latest CD for $10, will I lose by piracy compared to if I continued on my same deal with the record company?

    Probably not. After all, I understand that artists make about $ 1 per CD. So each download would have to be transmitted to at least ten people who would otherwise have bought before I'm losing money compared to the old system.

    Many people want to support artists, in the same way that people who buy an "official" Red Hat or SuSE CD want to support Red Hat or SuSE. I cheerfully pay SuSE $ 50 for their Linux distribution for the convenience of getting an "official" copy and to support their work; the same will happen with music.

    This, in my view, is why artists aren't afraid of MP3. They know that they'll gain substantially while record companies lose.

    It's going to be a long time, though, before direct reproduction becomes a feasible marketing strategy. Vanessa Daou [vanessadaou.com], a favourite artist of mine, tried an "internet only" marketing approach for her circa one year old CD Plutonium Glow. She subsequently released a conventionally-distributed version, so I have to assume the direct marketing was not as successful as she would have hoped.

    D

    ----
  • Don't start hollering about freedon, now. Nobody is free to commit theft.

    Now would that be theft as in listening to stuff thats free on the radio, or theft as in charging $15 for a CD?

    BTW, we're all free to do whatever we want, theft included. Of course, we're also free to deal with the consequences...


  • Check out the latest issue of Seattle Weekly for their article on privacy.

    http://www.seattleweekly.com/

    Will in Seattle
  • Want quality? Get a good ripper & encoder ... most people don't use quality tools. CDParanoia (for Linux only AFAIK) rips CDs digitally (not using the sound card, but raw off the drive) to avoid skips, etc. and BladeEnc gets better audio quality at higher bitrates (168k+) than the other compressors.
  • Here comes the cluestick.....thwack!!

    The issue here is that the record company takes some 80% of the money and gives the artist some paltry token payment in a trickle-down kind of effect. The issue here is to cut out the blood-sucking leech that is the record company and make money (the artist that is) directly. Moron.
  • VQF is a propriety format, created by Yamaha. Anyways, it had better sound quality for treble, and 25% smaller files, (i dont know about how long it took to compress), but it was deemed as "too little, too late."

    It's what Minidisc is to CDs (at least here in the states) -- People just say "Hey, I just converted my stuff to MP3s(/CDs), why am I going to change to VQF(/MD)?"


    ..................................@ @
  • Actually, MP3 is quite good for Joe Sixpack ... I know people who can't remember which switch is Power and which is Reset that use, create and trade MP3 files on the Internet. I used RealAudio format for my friends' CDs (Hey, can I borrow that?) for a long time before using MP3 because I already had a realaudio player and real encoder is free ... Mp3 is just easier now because there are so many tools. Sure, Joe sixpack who buys a new computer tomorrow may not use MP3 ... but in a month he will :).
  • That may be true, but if the users are anonymous, how can they trace it. They can watch the traffic go back and forth, but that doesn't mean they knew who the actual sender is.


    ---

  • I don't understand SDMI logic (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why on earth would anyone want to stop using the flexible MP3 format in favor of an inflexible SDMI? And even if SDMI starts pressing onward, who's to say I can't rip my CDs into MP3 files? The ripper will still work. The players will still work.

    One of the funniest things about the whole article is this quote from "an Internet manager at music label BMG" who said: "My gut feeling is that 90 percent of consumers would rather pay a sum of money for music that is endorsed by the artists." If, in fact, 90 percent of consumers feel this way then there is no practical need for copy protection.

    Hmmm...

  • 90% of customers would choose piracy (Score:3)

    by MS ( 18681 ) on Thursday July 08, 1999 @12:42PM (#1812537)
    Once upon a time...
    ...we copied from vinyl to tape. Sacrifying quality, yes. Sometimes we even copied from tape to tape, sacrifuying even more quality. But we owned more hits on tape than on vinyl. Then came the CDs. And we copied them to tape. The quality was better than from vinyl or tape as source. We copied a lot. Then there came MP3 and we copied from CDs to harddisk. Quality was excellent. Then we copied from harddisk to harddisk. It was cheap and fast. It's quite a few months now, I don't buy CDs!

    make digital distribution disapppear?
    How?

    As long as I can hear music, I may also be able to digitise it, and hence save it in MP3 Format on my harddisk. There's no technical possibility to avoid that someone will distribute this new song in MP3 format.

    No, guys, there's no way back.
    All other formats will die, as no one will want to use them (besides the distributors, but we are the ones, who actually listen to the music). Long live MP3.

    Markus

  • Here's some VERY inaccurate numbers:

    What percentage of people on Earth who have ears (or at least one ear) listen to the music EVER produced by the music industry?
    Probably about 85% (the rest are either Amish, or don't have access to a radio deep in the areas of prehistory)

    What percentage of those use computers?
    Probably about 40%... remember, not EVERYONE is computer literate! How many of your great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, or babies under 2 even use computers? (I know some do, but most don't.) Also include the guy next door who thinks a computer is the work of the devil, and should be burned at the stake.

    What percentage of computer users actually KNOW how to use a computer, enough to hear something?
    Probably about 40%... and that's a bit high. If the private Liberal Arts college I work at is any indicator, we have about 50 students and about 10-15 faculty and staff who are even THAT literate. That's about 20% of the total college population. I say 50% to include all you home users.

    Okay, and out of that number who can use a computer to hear stuff, how many are willing to listen to MP3's over buying the actual thing?
    Probably 25% of those. I know that if I hear a song that's good enough, sometimes I go out and get the actual CD.

    Okay, let's take the current world population, (6 billion) and put things together:

    5.1 Billion listen to music
    2.04 Billion use computers (now that's a high number!!!)
    816 Million listen to their computers.
    204 Million listen to MP3's, and never buy the actual thing.

    Okay, so the music industry is losing income from, at most, 214 Million of their customers.

    That's how much of the total world population?
    A whopping 3.4% .

    MP3 won't die, and neither will SDMI, of either sides complaints. They WILL die of people who don't use them.

    Just see how many people are getting DVD's versus VHS, and how many people got DIVX versus DVD. The figures probably come out even less than mine did. DIVX's demise was that people didn't use it, so it became extinct!

    At least a chunk of people ARE going to use DVD, so it will stay around, and eventually join tapes, CD's, VHS, ZIP (not for long), and floppy (who will kill them!) as media storage. I almost want to predict that DVD will become even more powerful, when both the audio, video, and computer industry use it... audio to get a MUCH higher sampling rate (as if current ones aren't good enough, soon our dogs and cats will enjoy our music!), video to get a much higher pixel rate, and more availability, and computer to get more storage.

    MP3's dying? Not likely. SDMI dying? Well, let's watch the demand. DVD dying? Not a chance, it has a great future.

    ERPbridge - looking at what might have happened if something occurred differently, in an alternate dimension.
    ------------------------------------------------ -------
  • Wired News: "Does SDMI similarly allow for "fair use" of music by me, the consumer? "

    Leonardo Chiariglione: "I don't think it is right [to apply the same standard] to an environment where you copy once, copy twice, copy a million times, and it is exactly the same as the original. So SDMI gives you the solutions: Content has an associated set of user rules. You are the author, I am the consumer, and we have agreed to these rules. "

    This is the Executive Director of SDMI, personally I'm not very interested in using something that comes from a guy who cares so little about fair use and privacy.
  • Hmm I'm from America (yes flame on.. hehe)
    And personally I was of the thought that privacy was a concern here long before the web. I may have read it all wrong but it looked like our Constitution was created with this strange radical idea of privacy. The only problem was that our foundered didn't realize it would become possible for individuals or corperations to invade privacy as much as the government. Oh the times when I would love to have had a time machine to show the foundered how their laws are being interpreted today.
  • The RIAA does NOT care about the 1% of the population who read Slashdot, use Linux, have the technological background to thwart copy protection, the time to surf the net for mp3's, use crappy handheld one hour portable players, etc.

    They are aiming the initiative at the GENERAL population who would just like to go to CD-NOW and purchase a $1 single and download it to their computer.

    Also, even though MP3's are popular now, people would much rather use a format that is secure, cost effective, and easy to use. I'm sorry, but the MP3 format does not fit the bill. MP3 is fine for archiving, but not as a distribution format. People still buy software even with WAREZ pervasive on the Internet because they are honest and don't want to break the law. I guarantee people will pay a lousy dollar or two for a song if it means they can easily download it and play it hassle free.

    Lastly, this hardware deactivation feature does not mean that it will deactivate current mp3 players on your computer, only those players that support the new format.

    When the general computer using population sees an add for $1 singles, they will go to their favorite online music store, download an SDMI enabled player, and the RIAA will have another user. The fact that it will initially support MP3's will simply be another feature for these users, but eventually the users will be weaned off of mp3's because SDMI songs will be so easy to buy, play and find.

    MP3's are popular now because there is no alternative. People weigh buying a $15 CD with downloading a pirated song and right now, Pirating songs wins a lot of the time. People don't like breaking the law if they don't have to. Once the record labels allow people to make their own customized CD's, it will immediately launch whatever format they support to the forefront. MP3's will be MAINLY relegated to pirating users and for people's own personal use. The rest of us, will start purchasing SMDI collections because our time is worth more than a dollar or two.
  • As respects the quote at the end, about how we should be sounding the death-knell for MP3 instead, i give a big "BZZZZZT! Wrong!"

    It is true that consumers by and large may begin to prefer the legitimate distribution channels, but that doesn't mean a choice between whatever tripe 'standard' the music industry comes up with and the 'evil pirate' mp3. Musicians and customers will simply route around the distribution companies that fight mp3's, or whatever format comes along. Bands will begin to fight to release their own property ina way that benefits them, and consumers will continue to choose the method that most closely matches their desires.

    The prez of Goodnoise made a valuable point along these lines: people might not want to surf an hour to get a song for free illegally, but would be very happy with just paying the .99 cents to get a single legitimate copy instantly. The anaolgy with DIVX is quite apt: industry decides what it wants and what is best for them, customers decide that there is no benefit for them, they refuse to buy in, the business looses, and out comes a new industry...

    All economic models depend upon consumers doing what is in their best intrest, otherwise there is no way to predict behaviour accurately. Am I going to simply accept a system that limits and restricts freedoms I already have? No! Why would I? Instead, a new model must be found to deal with my new expectations as a consumer. Same goes for musicians and bands. They know the score, and are even less inclined to stick around with a sour deal since they're losing out on so much money already.

  • ... many sound cards available today offer some pretty useful tools in "acquiring" audio from already digital sources.

    My SB Live has the ability to record whatever is being played (from the computer) without any DA conversions. So, as long as you can play an SDMI file, you can record an exact dupe as MP3.

    Not to mention that MP4 is going to blow SDMI right out of the water, quality-wise. Unlike consumer electronics, open standards in the computer industry move a lot faster than the industry developed ones.

    Plus, I don't think they realize the psychological reasons why MP3 will win. Most people (especially the computer-illiterates I know) tend not to see files/downloads as any sort of product. To them, it's not a tangible item-- they can't hold it, they can't throw it at the cat, they can't put it in their bags to show off to some friends. Therefore, to them, it has no real value. They're certainly not going to pay for something that they believe has no value.

    I know that's not the attitude for many of the computer-savvy individual. However, there are many people out there who would never even consider taking so much as a candy from the supermarket bulk bins, but would gladly download the latest Will Smith single.

    Which also brings me to my last (finally) point-- much of the mp3's currently available on the internet are the more popular songs-- usually singles. Since those songs are heard on the radio (sometimes a few too many times, ala Spice Girls) it doesn't really seem like much of a crime to get an mp3 of a song that has already been broadcast to the world. It's public domain then, right? Who would pay for something that's already free?

    SDMI is dead before it's started. The music industry shouldn't try to mess with a distribution system that is already in full force, and is definately doing much more good than harm. How difficult is it for an emerging artist to encode an MP3? Dead easy.
    How much will it cost to encode in SDMI? How many legal hassles will you have to go through? For many, it just ain't worth it.

    And I won't say that MP3 and MP4 will win, because there is no challenge-- they won a long time ago.

    - Greg.

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