Because PNG is not suited to this kind of use. PNG is primarily designed as a replacement for GIF. Different image formats are useful for different things. And JPEG XR will greatly extend the capabilities of JPEG, far beyond that PNG can manage - and PNG can't even measure up to today's JPEG for photos.
According to that page listing the WMP components, the SDK is provided free of charge given you own a licensed copy of Windows. Distribution of your program also appears to be free. I assume as soon as you start to make money for your program, then Microsoft will ask for royalties. I would have to give it a full read, but after a cursory glance, thats what it appears to be.
However, my point still stands. You as the user and maker of the WMA pay nothing explicitly, except for the device that will ultimately play it.
Some of you have to understand that Microsoft wants prominence. Sure, they can make some money, but ultimately they want their name on the format. VC-1 itself is open. But they want control of it and their name behind it, not necessarily money (although it ends up being a concenquence). VC-1 turned out so well that even some movies on blu-ray are using that compression technique.
Also, im sure the standardization board wont let Microsoft f*ck around with this, so i would bet its safe for all to use free of charge.
Because PNG is best for images with large areas of the same color. With photographs or images with large numbers of color, JPEG becomes the smaller format. A desktop screenshot can be 800kb in maximum compressed PNG but less than 200kb in maximum quality JPEG.
PNG is always lossless. Lossless images have their use, but in case of photos sacrificing 5% of quality (which in case of cameras is probably within noise level) can easily result in 50% smaller file.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Why not use PNG ? It's lossless a lossless format, it is compressed, and can't be open by many softwares.
Because PNG is not suited to this kind of use. PNG is primarily designed as a replacement for GIF. Different image formats are useful for different things. And JPEG XR will greatly extend the capabilities of JPEG, far beyond that PNG can manage - and PNG can't even measure up to today's JPEG for photos.
According to that page listing the WMP components, the SDK is provided free of charge given you own a licensed copy of Windows. Distribution of your program also appears to be free. I assume as soon as you start to make money for your program, then Microsoft will ask for royalties. I would have to give it a full read, but after a cursory glance, thats what it appears to be.
However, my point still stands. You as the user and maker of the WMA pay nothing explicitly, except for the device that will ultimately play it.
Some of you have to understand that Microsoft wants prominence. Sure, they can make some money, but ultimately they want their name on the format. VC-1 itself is open. But they want control of it and their name behind it, not necessarily money (although it ends up being a concenquence). VC-1 turned out so well that even some movies on blu-ray are using that compression technique.
Also, im sure the standardization board wont let Microsoft f*ck around with this, so i would bet its safe for all to use free of charge.
Because PNG is best for images with large areas of the same color. With photographs or images with large numbers of color, JPEG becomes the smaller format. A desktop screenshot can be 800kb in maximum compressed PNG but less than 200kb in maximum quality JPEG.
PNG is always lossless. Lossless images have their use, but in case of photos sacrificing 5% of quality (which in case of cameras is probably within noise level) can easily result in 50% smaller file.