New Entertainment Software For Your PC That Works With Your Pocket PC

[Ed Hansberry]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978093.html' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978093.html</a><br /><br /></div>Microsoft will announce on Tuesday availability of new entertainment software for the Windows XP operating system, featuring fresh tools for handling music, movies and photos on the PC. <br /><br />It is called "Microsoft Plus Digital Media Edition for Windows XP" and will be available for download January 7 from various etailers for $19.95 and will initially have a $5 rebate. January 7 is when Movie Maker 2 and Windows Media 9 are supposed to be final as well.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/plus/tour/default.asp"><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20021217-plusdigitalmedia.jpg" /></a><br /><br />So, how does this improve your Pocket PC experience? "The technology lets people receive news and media updates on handhelds with Pocket PC 2002. It includes a feature called Plus Sync and Go, which syncs content with the handheld to deliver daily tidbits from Microsoft partners including GolfSpan.com, MarketWatch.com, MSNBC.com and Warner Music Group."

[Sven Johannsen]

Hmm, wonder how intrusive and embedded the DRM aspects are going to be.

[hrianto]

Is this Microsoft Avantgo/Mazingo type application 8) ? Beware Avantgo/Mazingo :cry: .

[Gen-M]

Will they change partners as often as MSN? :evil:

[Samuel]

Does that mean you have to pay for Media Player, Movie Maker and this Sync n' go thing now?

(In other words, you can't download them for free anymore...?)

[Sven Johannsen]

9:15 notice post
9:16 make snide comment
9:17 register to get email when product is released, and get 25% off coupon.
10:45 E-mail from MS telling me about all the great holiday things I can buy. (I expect this will be the first of many :))

[cmorris]

There is a good review on what the new Plus pack has to offer here:

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_plus_dme.asp

[cmorris]

Does that mean you have to pay for Media Player, Movie Maker and this Sync n' go thing now?

(In other words, you can't download them for free anymore...?)

Media Player, and Movie Maker will still be free, but I think Sync 'n' Go will only be part of the pack. You can still copy music to your PPC the "old-fashioned" way.

[XmanHP548]

MS rips off Apple yet again... :roll:

Here's a great quote

"This raises the water for tens of millions of PC users," said Richard Doherty, president of research firm Envisioneering Group. "It's a way for them to get some of the flavor and sizzle of a full media center PC from Hewlett-Packard or Gateway without buying a new PC. Even if they bought a Pentium 3 or 4 computer, this will bring them a lot closer to the ease of use of, say, the iMac."

Better yet, why not just get an iMac? If you are in to digital media it remains your best bet. Also, Apple doesn't buy into the Orwellian "digital rights media management" of MS.

[klinux]

Well, the photo sotry does seem a bit of a rip off of iPhoto but there are plenty of new things in there as well.

I use both PC and Mac and the more competitions between the two the better it is for me the consumer.

Lastly, DRM is not always a bad thing. I believe people should have certain control over their contents (i.e. think how Jason will feel is all his books are freely available on Kazaa). The problem is that no current (or past) DRM system have ever gotten it right (balance between fair-use by the consumer versus protected content).

And this is Apple's position: until there is a true idiot-proof way of implementing DRM, Mac will be DRM-free. I agree with that . There are (nor will there be) no half-baked DRM scheme on my PC.

[Brad Adrian]

I'll get excited about this when I see that the selection of content providers is high, the length of downloads is long and the resulting file sizes are small.

[peterawest]

Microsoft... entertainment software... featuring fresh tools for handling music, movies and photos on the PC.
This looks great. I've already been using Movie Maker 2 for a project I was working on. It was able to import 4 103MB AVI files along with several still shots, add animation between each of the pictures or movie files and still compressed it down to under 20MB for desktop playback. When I saved it for full-screen on the Pocket PC, it was under 2MB and looked great.

I can't wait to see how much more I can do with these other tools.

I wonder if Jason got to see any of this stuff early, and if so, did he talk about it in his book?