Tag: WMA

Sony's introducing a new line of Walkman media players with support for video playback. While this is a first for the company, we're much more excited about a corollary to that story: Sony is killing off its Connect music store and along with it, the proprietary ATRAC music format. In a nutshell, ATRAC files sound about as good as any other compressed digital audio files. But unlike MP3, OGG, and ...

CodecInstaller does exactly what you would think. It installs codecs. Audio codecs, video codecs. All the usual suspects, DivX, XviD, Windows Media, AAC, you name it. Of course, if you've got a good media player like VLC or ZoomPlayer, you probably don't need a separate program to install these codecs. But CodecInstaller can still come in handy if you want a lightweight program for analyzing ...

Several months after Microsoft dropped its lawsuit against the developer of FairUse4WM because it couldn't find him or her, the utility has been updated to version 1.3 Fix-2. FairUse4WM strips DRM from Windows Media Audio files purchased online. The latest version can remove DRM protection from songs downloaded from Microsoft's Zune Marketplace, meaning you can play your legally purchased music on ...

How many times have you wanted to save a WMA audio file into your iTunes library on your Mac, only to realize that the only tool you can use to play the file is the Mac version of Windows Media Player?  Not a happy situation. Thankfully, the good folks at TUAW pointed out a tool that makes rapid-fire conversion of WMA files into iTunes-friendly MP3 a snap.  Called EasyWMA, this piece of ...

It's not often that Microsoft distributes third-party tools on its own web site, but it looks like they're making an exception for Flip4Mac, a plugin for QuickTime Player that lets Mac users to watch WMV and listen to WMA files without downloading Windows Media Player. It supports pretty much all the formats that WMP9 does, and since it's a QT plugin, it'll also let you watch streaming Windows ...

Last night Bill Gates, assisted by Justin Timberlake, used his CES keynote to officially announced Urge, the new music and media store from Microsoft and MTV that we reported on a few weeks ago. The service will have two million songs, more than 100 CD-quality radio stations, and exclusive MTV content. Currently Urge.com is a "coming soon" placeholder, curiously hosted on a Sun server. ...

EasyWMA is a tiny app for OS X that will convert those wacky Microsoft WMA audio files to iPod-friendly MP3 files. Unfortunately EasyWMA won't convert DRM-protected files, but you get what you pay for. ...