Posted 01/13/09 at 01:30:07 PM by Will Smith

Odds are you’re carrying at least one or two devices that double as a portable media player. We’d also bet that if you’ve spent any time at all trying to watch video on such a device—be it a cell phone, personal media player, smartphone, laptop, or pretty much any other device that’s not a DVD player—you’ve experienced compatibility problems. Right now, you need a thorough understanding of the codec, resolution, and container capabilities of all your devices in order to perform an advanced task like ripping a video for use on an alternate player or streaming content from your PC to, say, your Xbox 360 (by the way, we show you exactly how to do that here).

Hit the jump to learn more about the future of media playback.

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Posted 09/17/08 at 01:34:16 AM by Pulkit Chandna

The incongruity between disparate media formats has denied us a truly universal media experience till now. This is simply not acceptable in this epoch of technology convergence. A consortium called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystems (DECE) is working on improving interoperability between different media and consumer electronic devices. The group includes HP, Intel, Microsoft, Paramount, Sony and Toshiba, besides other prominent CE heavyweights and film studios.

The group will shed more light on its plan, to have greater interoperability between devices, during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). DECE will develop an industry standard, which will allow users to enjoy digital content across various devices without having to worry about compatibility issues.

If most people find merit in the notion that digital downloads are going to replace the need for optical storage formats, they will also agree that digital content will have to offer a universal media experience like the hugely successful DVD. “We see this vision of 'buy once, play anywhere,” Mark Coblitz, senior VP of strategic planning at Comcast – a member of DECE, gave the gist of the plan.

DECE President Mitch Singer even welcomed Apple, which runs a popular digital distribution service iTunes, tied to its products, to join the consortium. Do you think that services like iTunes are doomed?

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