Proprietary codecs unveiled for open source systems

Spanish software house Fluendo is selling codecs for Windows Media Player, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 to Linux and Solaris users.

Although there are open source media players that can work with Windows Media Player, the software can either fail to run or work only in a limited fashion, particularly on websites hosting video.

The new codecs are claimed to provide full support for the player, thanks to Fluendo's relationship with Microsoft.

"We are very happy to be able to provide the GNU/Linux and Solaris communities with this set of multimedia codecs," said Fluendo co-founder Pascal Pegaz.

"We have had these codecs in development for quite some time to ensure that they are of the highest quality and that all legal aspects are properly covered.

"By offering this drop-in solution we hope to increase the competitiveness of the GNU/Linux and Solaris platforms."

Fluendo is selling plug-ins to handle the following applications:

• Windows Media Audio
• Windows Media Video
• Windows Media MMS streaming protocol handling
• MPEG-2 video decoding
• MPEG-4 Part 2 video decoding
• ASF container format demuxing
• MPEG-2 Program and Transport Stream container format demuxing
• MPEG-4 ISO container format demuxing
• MP3 audio

Further codecs are planned for release over the course of 2007.

The plug-ins will work with GNU/Linux and Solaris applications such as Totem, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Elisa Media Center and Jokosher.

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