1. It probably wont supplant Jpg, just as Png hasn't supplanted Gif. But its an option, and a solution to your problem, if the file format does indeed offer better compression.

Frankly, I'm not sure why you seem to have issue with this. Especially since your not offering up a alternative.

How is better compression a bad thing? Would you rather they rewrite the jpeg format so it is like this, knowing that Microsoft Jpegs would be incompatible with Regular Jpegs, and therefore still be a new format?

Posted at 5:58PM on May 25th 2006 by Matthew Nitti

2. It's not that I take issue with this particular implementation - it seems fine. But do we really *need* yet another image standard?

Posted at 6:03PM on May 25th 2006 by Jason Clarke

3. Is it better than what we have now? Why hault progress?

Do we need planes when we have cars?

Posted at 4:02AM on May 26th 2006 by Matthew Nitti

4.
The only way MS can win with a new photo format is to make it the only choice for neophyte computer people scanning family photos/negs into Windows Media. This is assuming Windows Media system becomes popular - which it never will if MS doesn't tighten control over GUI design & improve scan/rip/organize workflow.

Posted at 4:59PM on May 26th 2006 by Edsel

5. compliance over compression for me, in these days of 300GB HD's and super cheap (and getting cheaper) memory, really this move on microsoft's part is simply greed - or lack of understanding - of the harm their formats are doing.

having just converted a third friend to the Mac OS X, having to re-compress wma-s to MP3's and using horrible hacks to get one friend's edited home movies into universally importable (not a word, is it!) AVI, I've really had enough of Windows Media Player, and its more processor hungry than emulating Vista on an iPod.

so, i suppose this is a move to make Media Player more like the iLife suite Apple have created; iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto all work independantly yet seamlessly, iDVD is quite a mind blower too... you can't do all that in one application MS! And you're not helping anyone by creating new propritary (initialy) formats that (I would imagine) would make this new Media Player lighter on the old CPU's.

maybe i'm still pissed from the hours of watching wmv's jerking around the screen while wma's (which played just fine moments ago) burst into flames on microsoft's "Windows Media Player" for mac. ouch, good thing they dropped that! :D

Posted at 3:12PM on Jun 2nd 2006 by Callum

6. This has been a common ploy Microsoft has employed over the years- attempting to leverage the market to its standard. This is seen most recently in the acceptance of the OpenDocument format as an ISO standard over Microsoft's xDoc standard and then Microsoft's refusal to include the now-international standard in their products. But more than this, companies are battling to try and control a maturing digital imaging market. Adobe is trying to throw its weight around with raw formats, trying to bend them to its will, etc. Nikon is branching out into software. Etc., Etc. All of the data analysis services are predicting a vendor shake-out in the next three years in digital imaging and we can see some of that effect already. It would seem Microsoft is simply trying to position itself to be left standing at the end. We have seen this fairly often in Photography- the last one came a few years ago when Kodak, Minolta et al attempted to change the common film format from 35mm to APS (Advanced Photo System). It was met with great enthusiasm from mostly corporate PR people and the popular photographic press but died almost as soon as it could as users did not support the move. Their old cameras worked perfectly well, thank you. We will probably see the same thing here unless Microsoft takes the same approach to Jpeg as it is with OpenDocument and will no longer support it. This could only happen if, as Redmond moves more toward the software as service model, they feel their position is strong enough to only include their proprietary photo format in the Sharepoint exercise. This would mean that Nikon, Canon, Fuji, Pentax, Sony, and all of the potential software makers would have to get on board and do it quickly. It would also mean that all of the digital cameras without the standard Windows photo format owned by folks who want to move to a new Microsoft product would become obsolete. I don't think the Microsoft photo format will get very far. They will loudly tout it and bally-hoo it, but they still very quietly use Flash on their web. And let's not forget, Jpeg is an international standard as defined by the ISO.

Posted at 1:31PM on Jul 2nd 2006 by Don Althaus