Orban and Coding Technologies Bring MPEG-4 aacPlus Audio to Windows Media Player Users; New aacPlus DirectShow Plug-in Enables Microsoft's Windows Media Users to Enjoy Near CD-Quality Radio at a Mere 32kbps.LAS VEGAS -- Coding Technologies, the leading provider of audio compression for digital broadcasting, mobile media, and the Internet, announced today with Orban, a professional broadcasting technology company, the immediate availability of a public beta for the new Orban/Coding Technologies AAC/aacPlus(TM) Player Plugin. When installed, this free software will enable any of the 80+ million users of Microsoft's Windows Media Player Digital jukebox software for Windows from Microsoft that plays a variety of audio, video and streaming formats including MP3, WMA, CD audio and MIDI. Starting with Version 6.2 in 1999, the Windows Media Rights Manager was added for securing copyrighted content. to take advantage of the remarkably high-quality, low-bandwidth audio format that is changing the way consumers experience digital audio via the Internet, mobile and broadcast applications. The Orban Coding Technologies AAC/aacPlus(TM) Player Plugin is a free, full-featured Microsoft DirectShow component that enables MPEG-4 aacPlus audio files and streams within Windows Media Player. aacPlus (also known as HE-AAC) is an industry standard superset A group of commands or functions that exceed the capabilities of the original specification. Software or hardware components designed for the original specification will also operate with the superset product. However, components designed for the superset will not work with the original. of the AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) An audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. AAC, especially MPEG-4 AAC, provides greater compression and better sound quality than MP3, which also came out of the MPEG standard. codec that utilizes Coding Technologies' Spectral Band Replication (audio, compression) Spectral Band Replication - (SBR) Guessing the nontransmitted higher frequency range of a compressed audio file by some helper bits (transmiited with the stream) and the transmitted base band. (SBR SBR - Spectral Band Replication ) and Parametric Stereo (PS) audio compression technologies to provide CD-quality audio in a footprint four times smaller than content encoded with MP3 (MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). Layer-3) technology. Digital television, radio and Internet broadcasters take advantage of aacPlus to deliver high-quality audio streams while realizing dramatic savings in bandwidth costs. Consumers listening to aacPlus streams benefit from an enhanced listening experience. Its compact bitrate virtually eliminates content rebuffering, a process that interrupts source playback and negatively affects the consumer's listening experience. "Orban and Coding Technologies realized that with the great efficiency and quality of aacPlus, it only made sense to empower the technology to work with Windows Media Player, one of the most popular and common media players today," said Greg Ogonowski, Orban/CRL vice president of product development. "As a result, we're delighted that Windows users all over the globe will now have a quick, free way to experience the wonders of aacPlus technology directly through their standard Windows Media Player." "Content rebuffering is the static of digital radio," said Shawn Hopwood, senior director of Coding Technologies. "We're delighted to work with Orban to bring the high-quality audio and the continuous streaming experience of aacPlus to such a large Windows Media listening community." "Spacial spa·cial adj. Variant of spatial. Adj. 1. spacial - pertaining to or involving or having the nature of space; "the first dimension to concentrate on is the spatial one"; "spatial ability"; "spatial awareness"; "the spatial Audio Solutions welcomes the addition of the Orban aacPlus Windows Media plug-in," said Louis Louw, CTO (Chief Technical Officer) The executive responsible for the technical direction of an organization. See CIO and salary survey. of Spacial Audio. "With Spacial Audio's recent adoption of aacPLUS in conjunction with Orban's Windows Media plug-in, it will allow broadcasters to offer more player choices for listeners utilizing aacPLUS broadcasted streams." The Orban/Coding Technologies AAC/aacPlus Player Plugin works with Microsoft Windows Media version 9 or 10. It supports standard ID3 metadata tags that display real-time stream data such as artist, album, and song information. The installation of the free of charge plug-in component is fast and simple, taking less than a minute to install, and requires no authentication, registration, monitoring or tracking. The Orban/Coding Technologies AAC/aacPlus(TM) Player Plugin can be freely downloaded from: http://www.orban.com/ Consumers can tune into a wide variety of MPEG-4 aacPlus Internet Radio streams at: http://www.tuner2.com/ About aacPlus aacPlus is an audio codec developed by Coding Technologies which delivers high-quality 5.1 multichannel audio at 128 kbps, near CD-quality stereo at 32 kbps, and FM quality stereo at 24 kbps. It is widely adopted by many international standardization and proprietary bodies including 3GPP GPP Government Performance Project GPP General Purpose Processor GPP General Physical Preparedness GPP Gambian People's Party GPP Good Pharmacy Practice GPP Gross Primary Productivity GPP Green Procurement Program GPP Generic Packetized Protocol , MPEG-4, ISMA ISMA See: International Security Market Association (Internet Streaming Media Alliance The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) was Founded in December 2000, by Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, IBM, Kasenna, Philips, and Sun Microsystems. It is a non-profit corporation whose mission is to accelerate the market adoption of open standards for streaming and ), DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) An international digital television (DTV) standard that is the European and Far Eastern counterpart of the North American ATSC standard. (Digital Video Broadcasting), the DVD Forum, Digital Radio Mondiale (communications) Digital Radio Mondiale - (DRM) A form of monaural digital broadcast using carrier frequencies below 30 MHz. DRM uses MPEG-4 AAC Main Profile and SBR at data rates of 16-25 kbps. http://drm.org/. , HD-Radio and MediaFLO. aacPlus is currently available on over 150 mobile phone models worldwide and is the solution for most over-the-air (OTA (Over The Air) Refers to any wireless system such as AM/FM radio and network television that uses open space as its transmission medium. ) consumer mobile music providers including: AOL, Sprint, KDDI, SK Telecom and XM Satellite Radio. Coding Technologies estimates there are over 20 million aacPlus mobile phones/devices in the market today, and project this number will rise to 100 million by the end of 2006. Coding Technologies Coding Technologies provides the best audio compression for mobile, broadcasting, and Internet. SBR(TM) (Spectral Band Replication) from Coding Technologies is a backward and forward Adv. 1. backward and forward - moving from one place to another and back again; "he traveled back and forth between Los Angeles and New York"; "the treetops whipped to and fro in a frightening manner"; "the old man just sat on the porch and rocked back and forth all compatible method to enhance the efficiency of any audio codec, putting the "PRO" in mp3PRO and the "Plus" in aacPlus. Parametric Stereo from Coding Technologies and Philips again significantly increases the efficiency of audio codecs for stereo signals at low bit rates. Products from Coding Technologies are fundamental enablers of open standards such as 3GPP, 3GPP2, MPEG, DVB, Digital Radio Mondiale, HD Radio, and the DVD Forum. Coding Technologies is a privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. with offices in Sweden, Germany, and Silicon Valley. Founded in 1997 in Stockholm, the company later merged with a spin-off of the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the inventor of MP3. Coding Technologies' customers include America Online, EMP, iBiquity Digital, KDDI, mmO2, Nokia, Orange, RealNetworks, SK Telecom, Sprint, T-Mobile, Thomson, Texas Instruments, Vodafone, and XM Satellite Radio. For more information, visit www.codingtechnologies.com. About Circuit Research Labs, Inc. Circuit Research Labs, Inc., the parent company of Orban, is a manufacturer of high-quality digital and analog audio processing, transmission encoding, and noise reduction equipment for the radio, TV and Internet audio industries. As technology evolves, Circuit Research Labs continues to innovate with state-of-the-art audio processing products for DAB, DTV and streaming media. Circuit Research Labs, Inc. purchased Orban(R) in May of 2000. Orban was founded in 1970 by Bob Orban, the world's foremost expert in transmission audio processing for broadcast. Orban leads the industry in the design and manufacture of audio processors for radio, television and Internet broadcasting. Recognized for its standard-setting Optimod(R) digital audio processors and the Opticodec(R) codecs, the Orban name has become synonymous with reliable, high performance products. Today, its versatile audio processing equipment and codecs are the products of choice in fast-paced production environments worldwide. |
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