Microsoft makes their format more widely available

Since I posted back in May about Windows Media Photo there have been some important changes! The format has been renamed HD Photo, and Microsoft has made the licensing much more liberal.

Via the Data Compression News Blog:

We have also made a substantial change to the licensing. The previous Windows Media Photo Device Porting Kit (DPK) evaluation and distribution license agreements are gone. We have replaced them with a straight-forward click-to-install End User License Agreement (EULA) for the new HD Photo 1.0 Device Porting Kit. It’s now easy for anyone to receive the complete HD Photo DPK, including the compressed bitstream specification and the ANSI-C reference source code. The DPK is free, and we have eliminated all distribution royalties. HD Photo is 100% free for all developers.

2 comments:

  1. That's good news, though I'm still fuzzy on the "why"... have you seen this comparison (by way of example) http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/wmp_codecs_comparison_en.html?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The claim is that their impressive decompression speed makes the worse quality okay. But ho hum, really.

    ReplyDelete