Microsoft, Panasonic speed PC-device media exchanges

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(10/27/02, 01:24:08 AM EDT)

Tokyo, Japan -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) and Microsoft Corp. have unveiled a new technology they have co-developed that enables a dramatically improved method of storing, arranging and playing back personal digital photo, music and video collections on recordable discs such as CD-RW media.

Called HighM.A.T. (High-performance Media Access Technology), this new technology is designed to significantly improve interoperability for digital media content between PCs and popular electronic devices such as CD players, car stereos and living room DVD devices.

CDs created using the HighM.A.T. technology will be fully compatible with existing devices that play back recordable disc media. Panasonic, Microsoft and Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. (Fujifilm) will adopt this new technology for use in their future products.

Inspired by growth in consumer use of digital still and video cameras and compressed digital music, HighM.A.T. was developed to create an easier and faster way to move digital media from the PC to consumer electronics devices.

Currently, when consumers want to create their own digital media collections (photos, audio and/or video) on CDs, there is no consistent way for CD and DVD players to read this data.

Each interface for finding media is different, and the viewable information, such as playlists, music metadata and folders with photos or videos, varies depending on what each device supports. The contents of these discs are displayed very differently on televisions with a DVD player than the way they are experienced on car stereos.

This lack of consistency confuses users when they try to find the music, photos or videos they want. In addition, with large collections of digital music and photos, it can take several minutes for the DVD or CD player to "read" and find the music, photos or video that are available after the content has been burned on the compact disc or other physical format.

HighM.A.T. solves these issues by creating an optimized way for PCs to identify digital files on recordable disks and standard ways for consumer devices to read these disks.

The new technology will speed up startup times for data CDs and other physical formats and make navigation across a broad range of consumer electronics devices, including car stereos, DVD players and CD players simpler and faster. CDs created using the HighM.A.T. technology will still be compatible with existing devices that play back recordable disc media, and HighM.A.T. is compliant with the standard ISO 9660 Joliet file system.

Microsoft will begin adding HighM.A.T. disc creation support in its upcoming final release of Windows Media Player 9 Series and in a future version of Windows Movie Maker, the digital video editing and publishing feature of Windows XP. Panasonic will support HighM.A.T. in future versions of its CD and DVD players in 2003. Fujifilm will support HighM.A.T. in future versions of its products and that it is the first of many companies supporting the HighM.A.T. initiative.

HighM.A.T. technology will be made available for easy licensing by both software developers and other consumer electronics device manufacturers.

Go to www.panasonic.co.jp/global/ or to www.microsoft.com/ for more information on this story.

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