Analysts: Microsoft Media Player Format Too Ingrained For Rivals to Progress

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1745565,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1745565,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Microsoft Corp. has strategically nurtured its Windows Media Player, making it by far the world's most dominant program for playing digital music and video on computers. Rival RealNetworks Inc.'s product ranks a very distant second. It's not just that Media Player has long been bundled with the Windows operating system, giving consumers an easy way to handle multimedia files without the need to download others. There's another big reason: Many companies in the fast-growing market of digital media—from online music providers to the makers of portable audio players—have already chosen Microsoft as a primary multimedia format."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/landing_feature_onlinestores_180x96_ani.gif" /><br /><br />We touched on this last week when the ruling came down from the EU court. The ship has saled on multimedia formats. Windows Media is the standard on the windows platform. Sure many people still use mp3 and what would movie previews be without quicktime, but Real Networks has lost the ball and is no longer a player.

[whydidnt]

I disagree with EU ruling. One of the primary reasons that REAL has lost this battle is it's overly aggressive, snoopy software. I know of several people, including myself who refuse to install their software, based upon it's history of taking over media types, phoning home viewing habits and forcing unwanted channels down our throats.

REAL had a chance to dominate this market, but constantly shot itself in the foot, allowing MS to step in and fill a need. All most users want is an easy to use program to listen to music and watch videos. For the most part, if it works the mass market could care less what format the media is in.

[EscapePod]

whydidnt is absolutely right. I would rather not be able to listen to music media on a PC if Real was my only choice. They lost me forever as a user when I was doing deskside PC/network support in the early '90s -- endusers who sneaked Real Player onto their company PCs accounted for almost 80% of the trouble calls.

Long live WMP (and players of any of the many companies who don't stoop to the antics of Real).

[sojourner753]

While I concur with most people's impressions of Real software, it seems to me that this issue is more than MS vs Real.

Granted, MS does make a very good solution for multimedia. WM10 for example. But I don't think that it should be difficult for users to use 3rd party solutions.

Of course it shouldn't be difficult to use Microsoft's solution either.

The real question is, is MS using its desktop dominance to unfairly hinder 3rd party solutions. Personally I think that unfair should be defined as unethical.

Do 3rd parties have access to the same APIs as the WM solution? Is Windows unfairly optimized for WM?

[omikron.sk]

Is Windows unfairly optimized for WM?
I don't think so, because:
1. my machine is a bit slower (Duron 850MHz) and performance of WMP10 is especially with other applications running very poor. Some 3rd party applications run much faster, but I don't use them (read futher), so I don't think there are any real non-standard optimizations.
2. microsoft windows development team is (I think) a bit separated from WMP development team (but it doesn't really matter)

So why do I use WMP10?
1. integration with windows - not really a reason, but it does matter a bit
2. WMP is not only PC software. I use WMP (9) on my Pocket PC, too. And together with desktop WMP they are pretty strong (synchronization of songs etc.)
3. Windows Media Encoder - I know it really isn't the best software of its kind, but I am able to do whatever I want to do with it (streaming movies to my PPC via BT) and is also integrated with WMP.
4. I own microsoft wireless keyboard, which includes buttons for controlling WMP (play, pase, next track, etc.), those I tend to use very much and I think it would be pain to get them work with any other 3rd party player.
5. Looks much better than any other player IMHO ;)

The WMP might have gotten its dominant position also thanx to "its" formats - wma and wmv. I don't know about wmv, but wma is far better than mp3 and/or any other format out there (I don't want to argue about that - it's just my opinion ;) )

[Jason Dunn]

The real question is, is MS using its desktop dominance to unfairly hinder 3rd party solutions. Personally I think that unfair should be defined as unethical. Do 3rd parties have access to the same APIs as the WM solution? Is Windows unfairly optimized for WM?

I don't think so. When I bought my HP laptop, it came with WMP but also with iTunes pre-installed - so it's not like Microsoft is making it hard for other media players to be installed. I use WMP because it's the best for my needs.

[James Fee]

so it's not like Microsoft is making it hard for other media players to be installedWell it is hard from the sense that they all have to sign agreements with the hardware companies. WMP is installed by default and most of the time it has a promenent precense on the desktop, in the start menu or in the quick launch. So Apple, Real, Musicmatch and others much pay the computer manufactures to put them on the desktop. This ruling by the EU doesn't change that.

[Crocuta]

Do 3rd parties have access to the same APIs as the WM solution? Is Windows unfairly optimized for WM?

Well, one can always go into the 'Set Program Access and Defaults' area and make another media player the default one, and even disable WMP altogether. So no, I don't think they've made it too hard to use other products even as your default media player.