APEX DVD decks look to support WM Audio, WM Video and WM Corona

[Dr Mordrid]

Here's a conversation I had this week with Colton Manley, PR director for APEX;

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[2 lines of introductory stuff here]

Now for my question:

I see that WMA (Windows Media Audio is now being supported in some of your new DVD decks. Does APEX plan on supporting WMV (Windows Media Video) in future products? How about WM Corona?

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APEX:

WMV we have discussed favorably. Corona also but later date.

Colton Manley

(APEX Public Relations)

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It's starting to look like you could throw a saucer with a hole drilled in it into an APEX and the damn thing will try to play it

Dr. Mordrid

[Hulk]

This would be great. A few questions:

What program do you use to create wmv format files?

What is WM Corona?

Do you know which DVD decks support WMV? I suppose they play WMV files from CD's, right?

As I was walking through Sam's Club today I saw an Apex player with about 10 different logos of the formats it will play. I thought about your "it'll play anything round you can jam in it" or something to that effect statement and laughed out loud!

[Dr Mordrid]

WM7 video can be created in MSPro 6.5 using the *.wmv filetype option.

A fairly high quality Template is "2 mbps NTSC". This will take a 720x480 500 meg DV file down to ~34 megs (still at 720x480).

There is also a WM8 encoder that Microsoft has for free download on their website. It's DOS based, but there are several excellent control panels for it as well.

WMV disks would indeed be burned to CD-R/RW disks.

As of right now APEX decks only support WM Audio, but could change at any time from the way APEX is sounding. Maybe this falls models for WMV. By his statement Cornoa will come later, but that figures since it's still in development.

Windows Media Corona is the next-gen Windows Media. It's quality is supposed to be so high that some of its profiles can be used to stream video direct to theaters for digital projection instead of physically shipping them.

In fact two theaters are supposed to premiere WM Corna versions of theatricial releases in the near future as a demonstration of the technology.

By the way: as of now APEX is the #2 seller of DVD decks in the US behind Sony.

Dr. Mordrid

[xortam]

Will the APEX decks enforce DRM? If so, wouldn't that require the media to contain a valid license? I would expect that MSFT would require DRM enforcement when issuing WM SW licensing. Which WM encoders support DRM? I assume MSFT's WM8 encoder must. It seems that DRM is a real deterrent from WM based on my brief encounter with the technology.

[Hulk]

Doc,

Thanks for answering my questions.

I'm checking out that template you mentioned. I'm compressing a file right now, it's weird, unlike other file>create commands, this one does not preview the files as it is being compressed. I can see the time line moving through the file but not the preview and status information. Is that normal?

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup, that's normal.

I got a clarification from APEX today. WMAudio comes in March/April and WMVideo will be in their decks by the end of the year.

No word on if they will enforce content protection or not.

Terry