AAC format chosen for DVD-ROM zone of DVD-Audio Discs, beats out WMA, ATRAC, MP3

17 Comments

“The DVD Forum has chosen AAC for the DVD-ROM zone of DVD-Audio discs

17 Comments

  4. OK, AAC as the standard for Audio DVDs is a good thing. It increases the overall acceptance and awareness of AAC. I guess this might motivate more digital players to support AAC as a format which is also a good thing.

    However, in order for Apple to snuff out WMA as a rival, they should consider licensing out Fairplay to other players. They are focused on selling iPods and that is good to go for now, but eventually someone is going to produce a player that will be real competition. If Apple licenses out Fairplay (and it is still not entirely clear that Fairplay is Apple’s to license out in the first place) and AAC/Fairplay thereby becomes the accepted standard for the digital download market, then WHENEVER ANY digital player is sold, they are going to get paid. This seems ala’ Microsoft as a business practice but why not beat them at their own game.

    Apple completely sewing up and dominating the online music theater should give them incredible leverage to promote future products including computers. It could end up being like “If you want to do something with games get a PC but if you want to do anything with Music or Audio CDs you should get a Mac” Since iTunes is out there for windows, this would have to be reinforced by having great corollary products (such as GarageBand and hopefully more in the future) presented solely (or at least always initially) for the Mac Platform.

    As more and more users come on board for music it should help increase market share to the point where games are ported to the Mac or even produced initially for the Mac more often and sooner. This will help eliminate any inclination to choose Windows over Mac just for games.

    Also we all know if you just want to play games it is a heck of a lot cheaper to just buy a PlayStation 2, etc. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />

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  7. I used to work for AT&T Research before it melted down – we were part of the FADS consortium … Fraunhofer, AT&T Research, Dolby and Sony. Nokia joined the party sometime after the ISO standard had been created.

    About 95% of the intellectual property was from Fraunhofer and AT&T. Sony had a minor contribution and most of Dolby’s contribution was their marketing effort (they are the contact point for AAC)

    Advanced AAC was done outside of the original consortium

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  8. WMA is DEAD, Long live Advanced Audio Codec !

    Take THAT Billy “I want to rule the world” dickhead, BITCH SLAP

    The tighter you make your grip, the more slips out of your weasle hands.

    w00t, free pr0n for all.

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  9. Dont people realize that the reason the iTunes Music Store is profitable is the iPod? If Apple liscences Fairplay too much, they would have to rely on the iTMS for profit (which is not gonna happen). The whole HP deal shows they will only allow other companies to make more iPods and not competing products. The best thing they can do is to move to Europe, Canada and Asia ASAP and release in individual contries (UK and Japan) first if they have too, they are Hungry too eat up some iTMS music. and then start doing some hugge iPod updates, and maybe some personalized options (which they could charge out the nose for) such as DJ specific options.

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  10. Apple has a knack for being ahead of its time. And they always say watch Apple to see whats coming in the future. And they ignored Apple’s adoption of AAC and ridiculed it.

    Once again….Apple was ahead of everyone on this one and as always….got it right.

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  11. Buffy, Licensing would mean Apple get paid when someone else uses Fairplay. They would have zero production costs so it would be almost all profit. The iPod would continue to dominate because it is the best but even if someone buys another player Apple would get paid.

    I do agree with all the things you mentioned Apple should do. The timing of when Apple would license out Fairplay would be key. They don’t want to do it to early and miss the profits from being the innovator but they don’t want to wait too long and isolate themselves.

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  12. Buffy, Licensing would mean Apple get paid when someone else uses Fairplay. They would have zero production costs so it would be almost all profit. The iPod would continue to dominate because it is the best but even if someone buys another player Apple would get paid.

    I do agree with all the things you mentioned Apple should do. The timing of when Apple would license out Fairplay would be key. They don’t want to do it to early and miss the profits from being the innovator but they don’t want to wait too long and isolate themselves.

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  13. “AAC is perceived favourably by the music industry because of its integral copyright protection measures” ??????

    What integral measures? AAC has copyright protection measures?

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  14. KennyLucius, RTFA! Yours is a misquote. It actually says, Another positive factor was that AAC is perceived favourably by the music industry because of its associated copyright protection measures and a history of use by legitimate, paid download organisations such as Apple.

    Interesting that they didn’t mention RealPlayer’s use of AAC.

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  15. neomonkey: Take your medication. And perhaps a nap.

    MDN: Even though neomonkey screams like a madman, he’s right. The article has been updated to say “associated” instead of “integral”. Perhaps you should update your article as well.

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  16. Maybe I’m missing something here, but I thought that DVD-Audio was a format that is already on the market. How can they be chosing AAC for something that already exists?

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  17. You’re missing the first sentence of the article:
    The DVD Forum has chosen AAC for the DVD-ROM zone of DVD-Audio discs.

    The UDF (Universal Disc Format) is the format used in DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, DVD-ROM, etc. Only the content is different.
    So, as an example, a DVD-Video has a folder called VIDEO_TS in the root directory and all the DVD-Video content is inside that folder. If it also has other kinds of files or folders (Word or HTML files, QuickTime movies, for example), it would be a DVD-Video AND DVD-ROM, like we now have the CD Extended (CD-Audio + CD-ROM).

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