A jpeg rival is on its way!

[Sweedie]

A jpeg rival is on its way. Read this if you are interested in what Microsoft comes up with to make life easier for photagraphers, digital artists and multimedia creators: http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6076650.html
Is this of any interest for Ambient Design and the ArtRage team? To me it sounds very interesting!

[Aged P]

Hi Sweedie, there was some trouble a while back with a hackable new picture format that MS had launched.

General question.

Was it this new .wmf format?

An ArtRager will know!

[NewCube]

Actually, that was a bug in the way MS handle JPEG images that caused a critical vulnerability rather than a new format:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-028.mspx

[Sweedie]

While the old Microsoft wmf-format is a vector file format (emf is wmf with bitmap embedding) this new Windows Media Photo format, wmp, will be a bitmap format.

The attacs on the jpeg format was not a Microsoft issue, since jpeg is not owned by Microsoft but by Joint Photographic Experts Group. (http://www.jpeg.org/index.html)

The new bitmap format will get a near lossless compression, wich will be far better than jpg or jpg2000. That's why it is interesting.

Png is great, but delivers far to big files on the internet. So there is jpg, which destroys the images if you compress even a little. Jpg is pretty useless for professional work.

The wma-format that delivers music, is a Microsoft invention. It is very good, better than mp3 I think. This wmp is supposed to be the wma for pictures. The team developing the wmp is the same that developed wma, as I understand it.

[drzeller]

The biggest challenge by far will be encouraging adoption of the format by different hardware and software vendors. JPG's are so entrenched and well supported that I would guess it will take years for another format to take foothold. It will help that MS will presumably have native support for it in the OS and any Windows Mobile devices (phones and PDA's).

D.

[Sweedie]

The biggest challenge by far will be encouraging adoption of the format by different hardware and software vendors. JPG's are so entrenched and well supported that I would guess it will take years for another format to take foothold. It will help that MS will presumably have native support for it in the OS and any Windows Mobile devices (phones and PDA's). D.

I agree with you, jpg is probably a hard nut to crack. But the digital camera market, mobile phones, PDA's are probably the target. SonyEricson has already signaled their interest in the new format since it will make more room for storing data on their devices.

[AndyRage]

I can bet it'll support embedded Digital Rights Management, and become entangled in the Trusted Computing systems.
Which means you'll eventually be forced to run Certified Windows, on a Certified platform, to view certain content.

And I can bet I'll eventually be forced to support the standard, or software I write wont get certification to run on your hardware...

[Sethren]

Sounds like the beginings of a nightmare to me...... :( i would not be surprised with all of this Big Brother paranoia software rights going around......

[Sweedie]

Here is the Microsoft site on the new format:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/wmphoto.mspx
Intreresting reading for implementing the new format.

[Cooner]

I can bet it'll support embedded Digital Rights Management, and become entangled in the Trusted Computing systems.
Which means you'll eventually be forced to run Certified Windows, on a Certified platform, to view certain content.
Bejeebs, I hope not. I use a Mac, have used Mac for years ... DRM protected WMA files simply cannot be played on a Mac, even if you own them, because they never bothered to write a DRM-decoding version of the software for the Mac platform.

Not a big deal since I mostly use MP3s or AACs anyway, but it would suck if I suddenly couldn't view a standard image format. :P

[Sweedie]

DRM is a thing to fight, I agree. Since both Mac ITunes, Sony and Ms WMA uses the DRM I think there is a good point in supporting and buying the software that removes DRMs and makes it possible to use any bought fileformat on any platform. Therefore I always buy my music (I never useillegal software either) on Homedownloads, Itunes or Cdon. After downloading, I remove the DRM encrypting by using a DRM removing software, wich is totally legal. That way I both support my favourite artists and the Tunebite team. I still support copyright, even if it is owned by Microsoft or Apple. They are not evil, just doing some stupid things some times.

Software removing DRM can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Software_that_removes_DR M

Still I am interested in a new and better fileformat that has a good compression and is almost non-destructabe, like the upcoming Ms photoformat. I dont mind using it even if it is owned by Microsoft, if it is good.

The Microsoft Big Brother paranoia is hard for me to understand. Everybody seems to hate Mr Gates and what he has done. I don't. I like what he has done and I use it every day.

[AndyRage]

I'm in strong agreement with you, Sweedie.
We love Microsoft - they provide excellent development tools, and a great environment for software developers.

But I get nervous about a large company pushing their particular take on a standard that is likely to become ubiquitous, forcing me to work in certain ways. It offends my ethics and morality if to stay in business I'm forced to make my customers work a certain way to use my products - especially if I personally dislike working that way.

[Sweedie]

Andy,
I really agree with you on your thoughts. I like the copyright as a strong protection for the authors, artists, programmers etc. DRM and other issues, like software patents are EVIL. In Europe there is a strong movement against the threats coming from big companies like Sony, Microsoft, Apple and so on. MP3 has become a licensed property of Frauenhof. Therefore I use the free Lame encoder. Gif has become a licensed format from Compuserve, therfore I never use that gif format either. And so on. The latest attempt is Adobe trying to sue Microsoft when they started supporting the pdf file format in the upcoming Office 2007. Microsoft had to drop that support. So I have to continue using the free Ghostscript pdf encoder. The web and the computer society is becoming more and more monopolized, especially in the "land of free", U.S.A. where software giants are fighting each others and trying to make patents on pieces of codes and such.

This is a link to the No Sofware Patents site:

http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Thanks for your concern about the free Internet and cheap and good software!

[samIambic]

Thanks for starting a great discussion, sweedie. I read it with great, if inexpert, interest. Just last week, my own congrassman, a Democrat!!, a man I formerly had the greatest respect for, voted for the bill that allows internet priorities to those largest companies who can afford it. I still haven't been able to find out why he voted for it. Very disappointing.

Sorry for going off topic a bit. Just venting...