The new Hollywood Highlands Media Complex in downtown Hollywood was "the place to be" this week for the launch of the public beta version of Microsoft's Windows Media 9 (WM 9) Series platform. Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates hosted the evening's festive soiree attended by more than 1,000 media, entertainment executives, technology pros and about 60 third-party development partners. The tutorial/presentation kicked off with Academy Award-winning film director and digital image/film maven James Cameron describing his use of Windows Media for a recent webcast of his underwater Titanic 3D film. Gates followed with his vision of the rest of this decade he calls the "digital decade," a concept he supports with four pillars:

--offer content in flexible form for use in honest markets (read that as users will pay for it);

--educational dialogs with young people, making sure they understand that content providers need and want to be paid like any other hard worker in the world;

--policy implementation to enforce DRM (that's Digital Rights Management);

--and provide technology that protects DRM by way of a digital "envelope" that surrounds and encrypts all WM9 Series content.

Celebrity endorsers Sir George Martin and rapper LL Cool J took the stage, and in separate testimonials, both briefly talked about how and why (for them) WM 9 Series will facilitate the ways consumers will enjoy media and entertainment.

All-Pervasive System
WM 9 is far beyond an upgrade to WM 8; rather, it appears to be an all-pervasive system for digital media delivery that includes advanced compression and decompression (codec) technology, which is coupled with content creator/owner/producer control (via encryption algorithms) over the lifespan, cloning and subsequent migration of digital files downloaded to your computer. Like competing schemes from RealNetworks and Apple, WM 9 Series is for TV and music CD-quality streaming video and music over the Internet.

Recently, Motion Picture Association Of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti said he was very much "impressed" by the software's ability to give content owners a way to assign rights to files downloaded by consumers - in line with a pending U.S. Senate bill mandating a government-approved anti-piracy mechanism in all computers and consumer electronics sold in the U.S. The new abilities of WM 9, reflecting the more than $500 million spent on its development, might be likened to a "Faustian bargain.” But more importantly, to me at least, it points to a whole new paradigm: a separate PC-based fully-integrated appliance used for home media entertainment.

Connected to the Internet by a high-speed service like DSL or cable modem, this appliance would download any and all your entertainment media from music, movies, videos or maybe home training/schooling courses. Hewlett-Packard already has an XP Media Center Edition that allows you to surf the Web, watch cable or broadcast TV and record all of it on a hard-drive or DVD - but NOT play it back somewhere else or send it via an e-mail. Via WM 9, pricing would be tiered, depending on what one downloads and how it is to be used. Files can be set to “evaporate” or expire after a certain use period, copied once only, or not at all. Possibly a "Holy Grail" for video rental businesses like Blockbuster, a rented video could simply “disappear” at the end of a specific rental period. Gates describe a "digital home" scenario where one could download music and then pass it on (via home wireless network) to portable players or perhaps a car's radio for enjoyment later.

The Feature Set
A big part of the presentation focused on the notable leap WM 9 Series takes the whole process of streaming and downloading large media files. Compelling features include:

- zero buffering wait time (for broadband connections) with movie and music files instantly downloading and playing from a mouse click;

- full-screen smooth video—no more herky-jerky motion; better sound than CD and better video than DVD—WM 9's codec can deal with full 1080 line high definition video source program and 24-bit/96kHz, 7.1 surround sound audio files;

- video “smoothing,” where an 8kbps (the transfer rate of a typical digital cell phone call) and 10 frames per second video clip was delivered over a dial-up modem and ended up looking like 24 fps video (!);

- WMA (Windows Media Audio), providing the ability to time-stretch both video and audio for slowing down or speeding up a video presentation without altering pitch or apparent frame rate;

- WMV (Windows Media Video) was shown to offer similar quality for either MPEG-2 (DVD video) or MPEG-4 but about half the streaming bandwidth. This makes DVD movie quality possible over a 750kbps connection (typical DSL speed); f

- and, complete universal usage on any device from portable music players to PCs to handheld PDAs or PC tablets.

Windows Media 9 Series is Microsoft's direct response to Hollywood's demand for higher quality audio and video over the Internet, and it looks to become the defacto, über-standard all content owners and producers have been waiting for to fully embrace Internet conveyance.