WMA

andy baxter andy at earthsong.free-online.co.uk
Tue Dec 11 16:13:13 UTC 2007


Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> andy baxter wrote:
>   
>> Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>>     
>>> Caleb Marcus wrote:
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Ugh, ONLY records to WMA? I'd look at another recorder... that's just
>>>> annoying. Another thing is that you may lose quality by converting a
>>>> lossy format, WMA, to another lossy format, mp3.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> But for the price, the reviews are actually very good for the unit.  AND 
>>> it acts as a drive...apparently a lot of the DVR's use software for 
>>> transfers, this one has a USB plug built right in so no cables are 
>>> needed, and the Linux generic USB driver works with it!
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>> Ah, but if you buy this then not only are you getting a piece of kit 
>> that's going to be awkward to use with linux, you're also encouraging 
>> Olympus to carry on making voice recorders that use proprietory formats.
>>     
>
> If awkward is just a matter of using mplayer or VLC to convert from one 
> format to another in a few minutes, that is really not anywhere near as 
> much hassle as what other options offer for a low price.  It records in 
> WMA format, but plays back mp3's and WMA's. Maybe it's a licensing 
> issue. Maybe it's a partner issue.  If all it takes to get it to work is 
> a few minutes of processing initially from a console then that's really 
> not worth raising a ruckus over in my book, especially when they've made 
> it mass-usb compatible (so it works like a flash drive) and it gets 
> otherwise good reviews in sound quality and usability and the conversion 
> process isn't something I'm forced to buy a third-party software package 
> to fix.
>   
But, not having to buy a third party program depends (I think) on 
Microsoft continuing to decide not to enforce its patents on WMA against 
the mplayer project, which they would be legally entitled to do and 
might do at some point in the future.
> If it were DRM'd or required special software then I'd not spend the money.
>
>   





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