[11:00 AM] Downloadable Music Format To Have Mac Client At Launch
by Staff
InterTrust Technologies Corporation, the MetaTrust Utility, and QDesign Corporation have teamed up to provide a cross-platform system for purchase and play of streaming or downloaded multimedia content over the Web. By providing a Mac and Windows client, the MVP Player, simultaneously they hope to set a standard for controlled downloadable content purchase. According to QDesign:
The partnership is aimed at developing a DRM-enabled, scalable audio format for digital streaming applications. Further, QDesign and InterTrust will work together to integrate DRM technology into the Windows version of the recently released MVP audio/video player, a cross-platform (for MacOS and Windows) software application for recording and playback of digital music and videos.
Adding the QDesign high quality, scalable audio codec to the growing list of DRM-enabled audio formats (MP3, AAC, and others) will result in more digital music commerce options. Music player companies will have more DRM-enabled development options. Content owners will have extensive control over how their music content is promoted, licensed, and sold without the need to re-purpose content each time new distribution and business models are introduced. Consumers will have greater choice in DRM-enabled music players as InterTrust and QDesign work to integrate DRM into the audio capabilities of the MVP player, with the goal of becoming another MetaTrust-Certified audio player.
The QDesign audio codec technology is optimized to produce high quality audio at data rates as low as 1.0 KB per second. The combination of scalability and quality of the QDesign audio technology allows a singled encoded source file to serve a broad range of music products and services, from music download to personalized streaming Internet radio. The "on-the-fly" scalability allows QDesign encoded audio to automatically fit to available storage (i.e., up to 5 times more audio than standard MP3 files on portable music players) as well as dynamically adapt to available bandwidth for Internet streaming.
You can find more information at the IntertTust and QDesign web sites.
