Window Media Player logo BitTorrrent logo

In yesterday’s “Daily Source Code”, Adam Curry is talking about his meeting in Redmond with the Windows Media Player team.

Adam says he can’t tell anything… but what else could this probably mean than Windows Media Player supporting podcasting – or “blogcasting” as they like to call it in Redmond ?

What could Microsoft possibly add to get their Media Player ahead of iTunes? Video? No way: iTunes has had that for even longer than the iPod video.

If I was Microsoft (yeah, right :») I’d definitely add all podcasting features you can find in iTunes and I’d add this little extra: BitTorrent distribution! (Or any other P2P distribution method if I had a political/licensing problem with BitTorrent…)

Today, independant podcasters can easily put their shows online, but as soon as they get popular, they face a huge problem: bandwidth!

The current podcasting architecture relies on a central server for each podcast and independant podcasters just can’t afford the bandwidth it’s going to take. And it only gets worse with video-casting.

Right now they have no alternative other than paying the bills and financing them by adding advertisements to their shows. A peer-2-peer add-on to the architecture would change the deal significantly. We all know how large files get distributed easily that way.

Of course the risk is for the system to be hijacked in order to illegally distribute copyrighted material… This is why Apple hasn’t done it in the first place. Will Microsoft have the guts to do it? Hum…

Does Microsoft only need to do something like this? Well… yes… sort of. They’ve lost the leadership in digital contents already and they’re losing a lot of momentum too. Besides, they have finally realized they needed a damn good IE7 after swearing there would never be a new browser after IE6… Now they realize they need a damn good new Media Player…

Can’t wait to see what’s in it!


Comments from long ago:

Comment from: Alexandre Lemieux

This would be awesome but honestly, I don’t see Microsoft taking this direction.

Did they really said there would never be a new browser after IE6? This is just as stupid as saying everybody will only ever need 640kb of RAM. Oh wait, wasn’t it Bill Gates who said that originally? Or maybe they plan on doig service packs for IE until then end of time.

Here’s the link, if your readers want to get to this show directly.

2005-10-20 14-38