I am pleased to share this news with the HA community - first of all, Nero Mobile - release of the next-generation mobile media center has been announced on the IFA 2006 in Berlin:

http://www.nero.com/eng/PR_2006_09_02.html

Nero Mobile will fully support Nero Digital Audio+ (with album art) and it will be available with the major update of Nero 7 which has also been announced @IFA and will be available in September:

http://www.nero.com/eng/PR_2006_09_01.html

1411,2 kbps / 44 = 32 kbps.
I don't think that many members here would agree that 32 kbps encodings could seriously be describe as "highest fidelity sound quality". "Decent quality" is credible, "high fidelity" is simply risible.
I personaly think (but my voice has no power) that such claim (not yours I suppose but rather one coming from the marketing department) has absolutely nothing to do in HA.org announcement and should be removed. The copy and paste function should be used with care, especially here

Sorry Ivan, but I also think that this sounds too much like advertising.

It would have been better (IMHO) if you described the product in a casual way, and give link to press release, instead of pasting the press release.

Okay - post edited.

Can you divulge any details yet?

What will the supported platforms be? Windows Mobile, Symbian (S60v2? S60v3? S90? UIQ?), or J2ME? Will it have an "embedded" A2DP profile for phones that do not have this profile standard (ie, like MSI's BluePlayer)? AVRCP? Customizable buttons? Album art support for both embedded images in tags as well as folder.jpg style pics?

Okay, quick facts about Nero Mobile:

* Windows Mobile 2003/2005 on the Launch in September
* Symbian S60/S80/UIQ coming soon
* Customizable Buttons - Yes
* Album art currently supported for Nero Digital Audio+

* Codecs in: MPEG-2 Video, MPEG-4 ASP Video, MPEG-4 AVC Video, AAC, HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AMR, JPEG (Photo), PNG (Photo), BMP (Photo)

You decided to support Vorbis? How did you managed to resolve Vorbis's can of worms?

I would have to ask our engineers who were working on supporting Ogg, but if I remember the discussions we had during that time, the porting of Ogg for our system went quite OK and without any worms ;-)

Any FLAC support included?

Can we expect an update for the AAC encoder as well?

No, FLAC support is not in this release (I am wondering why using FLAC on the mobile device, especially with pretty limited storage space?

As for the AAC Encoder update, it will happen later this year.

I was more concerned about FLAC support in the updated Nero 7 release, not the mobile device release

I was not thinking about implementation issues, but about the "big can of worms", ie the "patent free" claim, and the potential licensing issues.

EA used vorbis since long time ago ... many big companies did ...

Since when does this mean anything?

Many big companies also use MPEG-4 ASP video and see what happened...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1923218,00.asp

Since when does AT&T own patent liscense to MPEG-4 related stuff? I have never heard of this one before.



I think Xiph patent attorney would have covered every spec of code and any changes would have been made if it was in violation of any patents. The only thing that is really speculative is the block switching algorithm, but I think that's legit. The licensing issue would appear to be more of a problem. Bungie uses Vorbis under the table in the PC port of Halo.

What licensing issues?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Licensing

Only thing I can see there is FUD, absolutely nothing definite about there being any REAL licensing issues.

I'm sure EA attorneys had taken a look ... (could be wrong) ... anyway, each time you do something, you are at the risk of someone waiting for your product to be successful to come get you ... just ask apple what they think of creatives patent ... or MS about Eolas ... etc, etc, etc ... so, does it means we should not develop anything, so we don't get a chance of getting sue?

I am in no way saying that current Vorbis encoders are covered by some patents. All I am saying is that Xiph did not yet explained why current encoders are not covered by the "usual" patents, which would at least provide a good starting point regarding patent safety.

(yes, can of worms...)

Here, we are talking about Vorbis decoding, right?

If I remember the long discussion the patents in question that were debaded if they apply to Vorbis or not were related to energy-based MDCT block-size switching - but that is for sure related to encoding, not decoding nor transport/storage.

And, yes - AT&T has essential IP in the field of MPEG-4 Video.

Will September also bring that Linux build of Nero Digital Audio or has it proved too $GERUND in the end?

So, the Nero 7.5.1.1 available for download today (September 18) has no changes in the Nero AAC encoder?

No, Nero Digital Audio+ encoder for Linux is unfortunately not yet ready for the masses

How about now?