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  • Gimme Fiction

    • 10 out of 10
    • Spoon
    • Gimme Fiction by Spoon is a terrific album by an Austin band that I was lucky enough to catch on an Austin radio station during a Christmas visit.

  • Odyssey Number Five

    • 10 out of 10
    • Powderfinger
    • Guitar-driven rock out of Australia, Powderfinger has not seen much exposure in the States, but should get a nod for their toe-tapping songs. Building off their previous release, "Internationalist" (
  • The Wall (Deluxe Packaging Digitally Remastered)

    • 10 out of 10
    • Pink Floyd
    • Okay, someone had to say it, and though others on the iPO staff are more qualified to review this album, I decided the time was now. This is the quintessential concept album. Though others came before
  • Never Let Me Down [ECD]

    • 4 out of 10
    • David Bowie
    • It must be a lonely place to be considered David Bowie's worst album by just about everyone, including the artist himself. As the last album before Bowie "rebooted" and formed the band Tin Machine, "N
  • Quadrophenia

    • 10 out of 10
    • The Who
    • Quadrophenia is everything that Tommy wanted to be, a rock opera that told a story, but one where every song could still stand alone. It was also Pete Townshend's farewell tribute to the Mod

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News

Column: Microsoft the Real Loser in HD DVD Defeat

The real loser in the demise of the HD DVD high-definition disc war wasn’t just Toshiba, according to Daniel Dilger at Roughly Drafted on Thursday. It was Microsoft’s attempt to control the video distribution standards

On the surface, the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD can be viewed as two competing technology formats. HD DVDs are more like the older DVD, are easier to manufacture and the players are less expensive. Blu-ray discs hold more data and can have a higher delivered bit-rate. However, at another level, there were some serious agenda items behind Microsoft’s backing of the format.

"This wasn�t a simple physical format war like the old VHS and Betamax rivalry; also at stake were the future of video codecs and embedded interactivity development," Mr. Dilger wrote. "This was a battle for software and open markets that went far beyond HD disc movie playback."

The real winners were Java and MPEG4. The losers were Microsoft’s HDi and VC-1 codec. "Apple, Nintendo, and Sony were all working to push OpenGL against Microsoft�s proprietary DirectX," the author continued. "The video industry was pushing behind the ISO�s MPEG-4 H.264 and AAC, aided by the popularity of Apple�s iTunes, rather than the proprietary WMA and WMV/VC-1 codecs Microsoft was working to advance. The embedded industry favored Java over Microsoft�s latest proprietary efforts to own interactivity. HD-DVD died because the industry collectively worked to kill it as a proprietary monster that would enslave users, studios, and developers to Microsoft�s software. It wasn�t a simple disc format struggle."

"The death of HD-DVD says more about Microsoft and its future than the general media seems to recognize. It�s not a format war, its a culture war between industry players working to advance the state of the art collectively in partnerships, and one company working to own everything while contributing very little," Mr. Dilger concluded.

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