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Technology Stocks : e.Digital Corporation(EDIG) - Embedded Digital Technology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob who wrote (10780)	2/6/2000 12:57:00 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 18366

intechzone.com intel.com

To: bob who wrote (10780)	2/6/2000 1:25:00 AM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18366

There is no need for more than one music and one voice codec in a recording device, unless the device is going to connect directly to the Internet. In that case, it would need multiple codecs to decode various formats that the material might be transmitted in. But if it's just going to record audio from a PC audio card, or receive digital audio from a PC (for example, over a USB bus) then there is no need - the PC would do the decoding, and the material would be re-encoded in the device. No need for multiple codecs - just choose whichever one the manufacturer feels is best, and use it to code either analog or (unencoded) digital audio. In any case, the "problem" of multiple codecs is a trivial one. A TRIVIAL one. It's primarly a problem of making the necessary licensing arrangements with the holders of the codec patents. There is no - NO - technical challenge. I cannot fathom why anybody would consider it more difficult to implement multiple codecs in a single device than one. BTW, I predict that the various copy-protection schemes are going to go nowhere. There is inherently no possibility of truely copy-protecting music. It has to be decoded in order to listen to it. Once it is decoded, it can be re-coded. While there is some (small) loss of quality if it is re-coded from an analog representation, that loss of quality is less than that already inherent in high-compression audio codecs such as MP3. And, anyway, in most cases, a digital representation of the decoded audio will be readily available, thus circumventing even that small loss of quality.