fyi, Windows media player 12 will natively support aac, I suppose confirming the success of the ipod.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081...w-features.html

WMP12 includes support for H.264 video, AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video, in addition to all the formats supported by WMP11 in Vista (MPEG2, WMV, MP3, etc.).

Just a FYI: The Zune software has supported AAC and H.264 since it's launch two years ago. It's about time the functionality was back-ported to the core Windows Media Player product.

(Isn't that article a little 'old' for news?)

I hadn't seen it posted anywhere here.

Other post

It seems that post is talking about the upcoming Windows OS 7, not WMP the player. But anyway, it makes sense they include AAC in the next WMP since they already said Silverlight 3.0 when released will support AAC. It would be pretty weird if their own player doesn't play their newest media files.

Especially since the XBOX 360 supports these formats. Finally i'll be able to stream them from WMP.

More the success of iTunes Plus music - most AAC music 'in the wild' used to be DRM'ed iTunes songs that WMP couldn't play anyway. Now that DRM-free AAC is more widespread, it makes sense to pay more attention to it. Strange as it may sound, Microsoft has a big incentive to push AAC over MP3, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to license.

Is licencing AAC over MP3 really so much cheaper?

Microsoft could be interested in supporting DRM-free AAC to confuse people who buy from iTunes and 'tease' Apple fanboys (I miss a devil emoticon).

Yes, a lot - especially encoders but decoders are cheaper (in volume) as well.
AAC licensing
MP3 licensing