Microsoft, which plans to launch a new beta version of its Windows Media Player on 4 September, shrugged off any threat from AOL Time Warner and Winamp to its own player. It pointed to Winamp's support for the Windows Media formats as a strategic plus for the firm. "The release of Winamp3 is proof that Microsoft is realizing one of its key goals for digital media -- to deliver technology that others can build on in creating their own products," Jonathan Usher, director of the Windows Digital Media division, wrote in an email. "For example, Microsoft has worked to ensure that it is easy for developers to build support for Windows Media playback into their applications. So we're pleased to see the addition of Windows Media Video playback as a key feature of Winamp3." RealNetworks recently released significant parts of its technology to an open-source development organization called Helix in order to give developers of devices and applications more freedom to build support for Real's formats. AOL Time Warner called it "too early to tell" whether Helix would permit Winamp to add Real support. Meanwhile, Winamp3 supports a long list of audio and video formats, including MP3 and MP2; MPG and MPEG; Microsoft's WMA, WMV and the ASF; the open source and patent-free Ogg Vorbis audio format; MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) and others, as well as its own Nullsoft Streaming Video, a codec-agnostic video format. The player does not support MPEG-4, a widely touted multimedia standard, or Apple's QuickTime format. In addition to the video capabilities and attendant strategic complications, Winamp3 introduces a number of new features. Nearly a year after its release in a beta version, Winamp3 launched with features that let users change not only the look and feel of the application but the user interface. AOL Time Warner credited the program's flexibility to "Wasabi," a new media software developed by Nullsoft, which created the popular Winamp media player and is now a unit of AOL Time Warner. Nullsoft's Wasabi has no connection to Wasabi Software, which makes 3D rendering software. Wasabi is both the kernel of the new Winamp and a development environment for building around that kernel. Winamp enjoys a large following of developers who design "skins" -- essentially the look of the player -- as well as functional plug-ins.
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