Report: Microsoft not down with third-party 360 wireless peripherals

Original post: click here

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Jon @ Nov 6th 2006 9:45AM

If you want to use the PS3 with anything other than HDMI...you will also have a proprietary cable. The PS3 will not have a VGA cable.

As for the memory cards...the Xbox allows for any USB dveice to be plugged in and the media read off the device. So any digital camera, Music player, portable hard drive, USB thumb drive...can be plugged in and the media read directly off of the device. So your statement is a bit misleading...you actually get more plug and play functionality with the 360 even without the card readers.

The 360 unlike the PS3 is also Plays For Sure Compatible and will pay any WMA and WMV files over the network if you have Windows Media Player 11. It will also play WMA and WMV files off of external hard drives, USB thumb drives and Burned CD's or DVDs.

Now while WMA and WMV are proprietary formats...they cannot be categorized as closed. These formats are available to any company that wants to license them. Including many that do...such as Napster, Yahoo Music, Real Rhapsody, Wal-Mart Music, CinemaNow and the list goes on and on. Most web sites these days also use WMV format for video because of it's superior compression and very good quality at high compression.

Neutral

tekdroid @ Nov 6th 2006 1:21PM

Now while WMA and WMV are proprietary formats...they cannot be categorized as closed. These formats are available to any company that wants to license them.
-------------
Of course. It still doesn't make them open.

Microsoft charges royalties for every WMA/WMV-compatible device manufactured.
Microsoft has strict licensing terms that include supporting their transfer protocol (MTP), their DRM, etc.

One company controls the licensing to the benefit of...themselves. One company changes licensing terms to suit...itself. One company turns on the lock-in to benefit...themselves, their OS, their grand plans.

This is all part of proprietary formats; closed formats. They are only open in the sense that the company licenses them to others, for the sole benefit of ... you guessed it - themselves.

Compare to FLAC http://flac.sourceforge.net and Ogg Vorbis http://www.vorbis.com, which are both not only technically superior, but open source and allow free implementations in any device, on any OS whatsoever, without royalty payments (there are no vested interests in promoting the Windows universe). Also artists/producers are free to sell/stream/whatever their content without restriction (or payment to a third party). No matter what the use.

2 systems: one is open, free. The other is closed, proprietary, with grand plans of collecting a toll on every piece of content produced with its tools in the not-too-distant.

Add your comments

New Users

Name

E-mail

Current Users

E-mail:

Password

Remember Me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

replying to thread #2594602

Add your comments:

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

Please note that gratuitous links to your site are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments. And yes, comments are moderated.