[BC] HD Radio Article

[Goran Tomas]

--- At 26.2.2006 12:39, Robert Orban wrote: ---
>Real Player 10 (or higher) will play aacPlusV2 streams. There really 
>is little reason not to use aacPlusV2 for streaming, given that both 
>Real and Winamp will play it. and that there is a substantial cost 
>savings to the broadcaster because, compared to WMA, one can get 
>better quality at lower bit rates  (32 kbps aacPlusV2 is good enough 
>for a majority of the consumer space; 48 kbps will satisfy anyone 
>but hard core audiophiles.)

I'm afraid that Real Player does not yet support aacPlus v2 :-( It 
does support aacPlus v1.  Most of the RTSP streams are aacPlus v1 
anyway, since currently there's no player which uses RTSP transport 
and can play aacPlus v2. In any case, even if the stream was coded in 
aacPlus v2 it would play in Real just the same, but it would be in mono.

At the moment, only WinAmp supports both aacPlus v1 and aacPlus v2 
(and AAC, of course). Since it's a free player, small to download, 
easy to install (it takes less than 5 minutes to download it and 
install it) I don't see why a fact that Windows Media Player does not 
play AAC/aacPlus would be a problem.

Every user, even the unskilled ones, have downloaded and successfully 
installed some software at one point or another. After all, all you 
need to do is click next, next, next...finish! ;-)


Regards,
Goran Tomas