Microsoft Windows Media Photo for XP, Vista to rival JPEG

Microsoft is making a pitch for the jpeg picture market with a rival Windows Media Photo format which will be supported in Windows Vista and made available for XP users.

The new format was revealed in crisp detail yesterday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, where Windows Media Photo program manager Bill Crow showed a pic at 24:1 compression that "visibly contained more detail in the Windows Media Photo format than the JPEG and JPEG 2000 formats compressed at the same level", CNET reports.

The Register - Microsoft reveals rival to jpeg

Called Windows Media Photo, or WiMP, as we hereby dub it, will first see the light of day when it is supported by Vista. WiMP’s programme manager Bill Crow is hoping that the new standard will encourage people to upgrade to Vista.

Speaking to News.com, Crow seems to think that one of the biggest reasons people upgrade their PCs is to play with digital photos. The Vole is hoping is that WiMP will be soft on the fact it is smart. It allows such things as rotating the image without the need to decode it and subsequently encode it again, he said.

the Inquirer