An Apple fanboy's lament

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re: An Apple fanboy's lament

"I could buy and own songs and videos that I could use on
any player...not just an iPod."

Right now, that's still a bit of a dream, thanks to DRM.

The best way to do that for audio is to buy CDs, then rip them to MP3s. There are a couple of MP3 stores around, but their music selections are very poor. iTunes still has the best music selection of any online store.

It gets worse in the video industry. DVDs can be decoded with special software, and BlueRay is possible but difficult. I don't know if HD DVD has been broken yet.

For all practical purposes, any high-def format is next to impossible to transfer to another device.

And oh, yeah, just to mix things up the Zune uses a different DRM than the very poorly named "Plays for Sure" devices. And Microsoft has made it worse by switching all devices to a "Vista" logo program that makes absolutely no sense at all.

For audio, the only thing that works everywhere is MP3, although unprotected AAC also fairly popular and can be played by many non-Apple players. iTunes Plus music is unprotected AAC.

For video, you're out of luck. There are a gazillion codecs, and the movie industry is trying very hard to lock everything down with DRM.

Posted by: CobraA1   Posted on: 12/19/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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