native WMA decoding in FW 19

[vidurapparao]

Firmware 19 (available with the next SlimServer nightly build) contains
support for native decoding of WMA files on Squeezebox2 hardware.
Playback of WMA files is now possible on all platforms (not just
Windows) without server-side transcoding. This build does not yet
contain support for WMA radio streams using the mms: protocol.

Please give this firmware version a try when you get a chance. If you
have WMA files, run through them and report any playback issues. There
were many firmware changes made to accomodate the WMA decoder, so please
test playback of other formats as well.

Enjoy!
--Vidur

[dean]

A couple of things to note about WMA support:

DRM protected WMA files aren't supported.

WMA Lossless files aren't supported either, and in tonight's release
the previously-working support for WMA Lossless transcoding will be
broken. This is expected to be fixed once we can distinguish the
lossless files and re-enable transcoding.


On Sep 2, 2005, at 4:07 PM, Vidur Apparao wrote:

>
> Firmware 19 (available with the next SlimServer nightly build)
> contains support for native decoding of WMA files on Squeezebox2
> hardware. Playback of WMA files is now possible on all platforms
> (not just Windows) without server-side transcoding. This build does
> not yet contain support for WMA radio streams using the mms: protocol.
>
> Please give this firmware version a try when you get a chance. If
> you have WMA files, run through them and report any playback
> issues. There were many firmware changes made to accomodate the WMA
> decoder, so please test playback of other formats as well.
>
> Enjoy!
> --Vidur
>

[mherger]

> A couple of things to note about WMA support:

This is amzing... everybody kept asking for this feature. And now it's
here, but there's no reaction in almost 12h...

>> This build does not yet contain support for WMA radio streams using the
>> mms: protocol.

Not _yet_. Excellent! Looking forward to testing this.

--

Michael

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[dip]

No reaction since I don't have any wma files. But 99% of my files are ogg files (the rest mp3), so I'm eagerly waiting for native decoding of ogg vorbis files... (to be able to fast forward and to resume my music). Please, will there be native ogg vorbis support in future?

[JJZolx]

> A couple of things to note about WMA support:

This is amzing... everybody kept asking for this feature. And now it's
here, but there's no reaction in almost 12h...

>> This build does not yet contain support for WMA radio streams using the
>> mms: protocol.

Not _yet_. Excellent! Looking forward to testing this.

That's the reason nobody's really excited, but it's obviously great news. I rather like the incremental, bits and pieces, approach to improving the SlimServer and SB software. It's encouraging seeing real enhancements being done on nearly a daily basis, rather than the "Here's version 8.0. Hope you like it" approach taken by most companies.

[MrC]

Ok, I'll be the first to confess. I have lots of WMAs. I just upadated to the 9/3 nightly with the WMA support.

The new code appears to be working fine. The wma to flac decoders are no longer running. And the wma support just gave me back about 5-8% of the my cpu. slim is using much less time and cpu as well (far fewer context switches i'd imagine).

I'll continue to test throughout the weekend.

Thank You !!!

[MrC]

Softsqueeze is not using the wma support yet.

[dean]

That's true, and support for WMA in SoftSqueeze is probably further
out on the horizon, as it would either require using (on Windows)
hooks into the Windows Media API or a separate license from Microsoft.

On Sep 3, 2005, at 10:12 AM, MrC wrote:

>
> Softsqueeze is not using the wma support yet.
>
>
> --
> MrC
>

[MrC]

That's true, and support for WMA in SoftSqueeze is probably further
out on the horizon, as it would either require using (on Windows)
hooks into the Windows Media API or a separate license from Microsoft.

Understood, and low priority from my perspective too. I figured I'd mention it here, in case others were interested. I noticed a problem when trying to sync SoftSqueeze and SB2 using the native WMA... no sound out of SoftSqueeze.

[kdf]

On 3-Sep-05, at 4:32 PM, MrC wrote:

>
> dean Wrote:
>> That's true, and support for WMA in SoftSqueeze is probably further
>> out on the horizon, as it would either require using (on Windows)
>> hooks into the Windows Media API or a separate license from Microsoft.
>>
> Understood, and low priority from my perspective too. I figured I'd
> mention it here, in case others were interested. I noticed a problem
> when trying to sync SoftSqueeze and SB2 using the native WMA... no
> sound out of SoftSqueeze.
>
SoftSqueeze does register itself as a Squeezebox2, so the server might
be expecting it to support WMA. it might be a good plan to have
Softsqueeze respond with its own set of preferred formats at this
point.

-kdf