Jason Dunn
03-19-2004, 07:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.highmat.com/whatisit/' target='_blank'>http://www.highmat.com/whatisit/</a><br /><br /></div>"HighMAT™ is a new technology that provides a convenient, easy-to-use, standardized way for you to create custom collections of digital music and photos — and play them back on a DVD player, CD player or car stereo. You can take advantage of HighMAT today in a broad range of DVD players and home theater systems from Panasonic, as well as in Microsoft Windows® XP. Millions of people every day are using their PCs to create personal collections of digital music (such as MP3 or WMA), and photos by burning them onto CDs. But until now, “my media the way I want it” has only gone so far. If you’re like most digital media fans, you want to use your homemade CDs on your favorite home entertainment devices, like DVD players, home theater systems, car stereos and even Grandpa and Grandma’s DVD player. You want 'my media anywhere.' "<br /><br />HighMAT is one of those technologies that sounds cool on paper, but until every device out there has it (which might take a decade or more), the true potential for what it represents won't really be attainable. Here's how Panasonic explains HighMAT:<br /><br />"Co-developed by Panasonic and Microsoft, HighMAT was designed to significantly improve interoperability for digital media content between PCs1 and popular electronics devices such as CD players, car stereos and DVD players. HighMAT is a digital-media standard that provides a dramatically improved method of storing, arranging and playing back personal digital photo, music and video collections on recordable discs such as CD-RW media. At this time, our HighMAT-compatible Panasonic products have HighMAT Level 2 functionality which includes compatibility only with audio files and JPEG still image files. Click here to learn more at HighMAT.com."<br /><br />So it seems that video hasn't been added into the spec yet, which would require Panasonic DVD playback hardware to support Windows Media 9 series video. That's something Microsoft has been gunning after for quite some time now - WMV support on DVD players - but they've met with limited success as far as I can tell. I do know, however, that my next DVD will have WMV playback support, even if I have to order some obscure brand that I've never heard of before. I want my WMV support!