Ultimate PlaybackExperience

Fast Streaming can deliver instant-on/always-on streaming to broadband users. IntelligentStreaming optimizes the experience.A fast and flexible player offers theindustry’s first Smart Jukebox.

Windows Media 9 Series dramatically improves theplayback experience, and can deliver instant-on/always-on streaming to broadband users, auto-matically optimized for customers’ needs. A newversion of Windows Media Player provides a wealthof features and is faster and easier to use than everbefore, putting users in control of their media.

Fast Streaming: Fast Streaming can deliver instant-on/always-on streaming to broadband users and adramatic improvement in the streaming experiencefor dial-up users.

Intelligent Streaming: With a single click, WindowsMedia Player 9 Series automatically picks the bestvideo size and audio quality to stream—and adaptsdynamically while streaming, based on your connec-tion. Your preferred language can be automaticallyselected or changed on the fly during playback.

Variable Speed Playback: You caneasily speed up or slow down play-back of audio and video withoutchanging the pitch or tone.

Fast and Easy Player: From start up and playback to automaticallymanaging large media libraries todata CD burning, Windows MediaPlayer 9 Series delivers improve-ments across the board; dozens ofUI enhancements and an improvedlayout make it the most intuitive player ever.

The First Smart Jukebox: The new player puts you incontrol of your media, enabling you to create or editdynamic playlists that automatically and dynamicallyupdate to reflect new additions or changes to theMedia Library. Rate your favorite songs to automati-cally personalize your digital media collection, fix badartist and album information for your Windows MediaAudio and MP3 files, use the new advanced tageditor to view more than 35 types of media infor-mation, and much, much more!

Unmatched Audio/VideoQuality

20 percent better compressionacross the board extends theindustry lead. New voice/screencodecs and video smoothing boostdial-up quality. New high-definitionvideo and support for 5.1 channelaudio deliver home-theaterexperiences.

Microsoft® Windows MediaTM 9 Series powers the next wave of digitalmedia. This new end-to-end platform provides the ultimate playbackexperience and unmatched audio and video quality at any bit rate.Windows Media 9 Series redefines the consumer experience,enhances communications and training for enterprises, and improvesdigital media commerce opportunities. Together, the player, encoder,codecs, server, and software development kit (SDK) in Windows Media9 Series form the most comprehensive platform available for thecreation, distribution, and playback of digital media.

The end-to-end platform powering thenext wave of digital media

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Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Seriesprovides unmatched quality on dial-up orbroadband. From digital 5.1 channel surround-sound and 24-bit audio to high-definition(HD), full-screen video, Windows Mediareaches a new standard, delivering crystal-clear sound and stunning video throughdramatic improvements in compression.

Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series:Compared with the previous version, qualityimprovements of 20 percent for audio and 15 to50 percent for video deliver the highest-fidelityaudio and best-quality video at any bit rate—from dial-up to broadband streaming todownload-and-play or physical format.

Optimizations for Dial-up Rates: VideoFrame Smoothing can dramatically improvethe quality of low bit rate video. WindowsMedia Audio 9 Voice is the first ever mixed-mode voice/music codec to support superiorquality delivery of combined speech andmusic content at low data rates (<20 Kbps).Screen content can be delivered at dial-uprates with Windows Media Video 9 Screen—alossless screen capture codec that can delivera picture perfect image.

The Web’s First Digital Surround SoundCodec: Windows Media Audio 9 Professionalprovides digital surround sound with true 5.1channels (or even 7.1 channels) for streamingor download-and-play at bit rates as low as128 Kbps. It also supports full-resolutionaudio with 24-bit sampling resolution and 96 kHz sampling rates.

Lossless Audio Compression: Delivering theultimate in audiophile performance, theWindows Media Audio 9 Lossless codec iscapable of mathematically lossless compres-sion of CD audio into half to one-third of itsoriginal size. The listener will enjoy exactly theoriginal sound quality, bit-for-bit; it’s the ulti-mate “archival” codec for your library.

Home-Theater-Like Experiences: Capable ofdelivering HD quality, Windows Media Video 9Professional can support video frame sizes of1280 x 720 (720p) with software decoding,or even 1920 x 1080(1080p) with hardwareacceleration provided by upcoming graphicschips from ATI and NVIDIA. WMV 9Professional delivers approximately threetimes the compression efficiency of MPEG-2,enabling dramatic improvements in videoquality for download-and-play or delivery viaphysical media such as CDs or DVDs.

Most ComprehensivePlatform

The best scalability, reliability,and manageability. End-to-endextensible architecture.Improved economicsthroughout!

Windows Media 9 Series provides the best,most comprehensive platform for developingand deploying digital media solutions. Theplatform is industrial strength, delivering thehighest scalability, reliability, and ease ofadministration. An extensible architecturethroughout enables developers to build on theexisting functionality and integrate technologyinto complete solutions. Windows Media 9Series also provides improved economics,further helping to power the next wave of digital media.

Industrial Strength Scalability: Supportingtwice as many concurrent streaming usersper server than the previous version (consid-erably more than twice as many in somescenarios), Windows Media Services 9 Seriesincludes a cache/proxy platform so it can beextended to “scale out” in an easy-to-managedistributed architecture that conserves

network bandwidth, decreases latency, andreduces server load to effectively support thelargest streaming audiences.

Flexible Administration: Administer the entiredigital media platform in virtually any environ-ment—through the Microsoft ManagementConsole, a Web browser, or command-linescripts. Easily deploy Windows Media 9 Seriesto every desktop in the enterprise with optionsfor custom skins, network/proxy settings, andlimited access to consumer features.

Server-Side Playlists: Content owners candynamically rearrange and swap contentwithin a playlist during streaming to providebreaking news or dynamically customizedcontent to users. Server-Side Playlists keepstreams running smoothly and viewers tuned-in as changes are made in real time.

Ad Insertion: Windows Media 9 Series offers support for a wide variety of advertisingtypes, including lead-ins, interstitial ads, and Macromedia Flash animations. Thesefeatures improve ad revenue generationopportunities and easily integrate with third-party ad servers.

Platform-wide Plug-in Architecture: Plug-inmodels for the player, server, and encoderenable developers to create custom solutionsand easily extend the entire Windows Media 9Series platform. A wide range of languages issupported, including Visual C++®, Visual C#TM,Visual Basic®, Visual Basic Scripting Edition,and Perl.

Enhanced Digital Rights Management(DRM): Enhancements to the proven WindowsMedia DRM technologies include the ability to protect live content, as well as easier imple-mentation for chip and consumer electronicsmanufacturers. Unique support for offlinelicensing enables the delivery of protectedcontent directly on CDs, DVDs, and other physical formats.