Windows Media Audio and Video 8 Beta

Just in time for the holiday season, Microsoft has announced that the first public beta of Windows Media and Audio 8 is available for download. According to the Web site, the new software "dramatically raises the standard for audio and video quality while integrating support for industrial strength security and rights management."

The media system comes with brand new compression technology that is backwards-compatible with both Windows Media Player versions 7 and 6.4. Microsoft boasts the new technology delivers near-CD quality at just 46KBps, and perfect CD quality at 64KBps. This means files encoded with the new compression offer the same quality as an MP3 of a higher KBps at a fraction of the file size.

On the video side of things, according to Microsoft, the Windows Media Audio and Video 8 beta offers near-VHS quality at 250KBps, and near-DVD quality at 500KBps.

The Redmond giant also reports that the new software package offers security for digital content like none other on the market today. The Windows Media DRM "helps protect the intellectual property of content owners, while enabling consumers to easily and legitimately obtain digital media content."

Also coming soon is the Windows Media encoding utility that allows developers to encode previous audio and video into the new Windows Media 8 format. The command-line utility allows for two-pass encoding, batch encoding, and "true" variable bitrate encoding. According to the Web site, "True VBR can be applied over the entire duration of a high-motion sequence, ensuring the highest quality."

For more information about the new software, visit Microsoft. The software is said to be made available today.