Bill Gates' Microsoft has announced continuing strong momentum for its Windows Media 9 Series. European broadcast and content production companies have announced new tools and services that take advantage of Windows Media 9 Series.

An official release informs that broadcasters also continue to expand their support for Windows Media 9 Series, employing the platform's compression efficiencies to deliver innovative new services over their networks. In addition, to increase the industry's access to high-quality video compression technology, Microsoft has decided to open its specification for the Windows Media Video 9 codec.

Windows Media Video 9 provides compression efficiency approximately three times that of MPEG-2. With the goal of enabling other companies to easily and independently develop their own interoperable products, Microsoft is submitting the compression technology used in the Windows Media Video (WMV) 9 codec to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) C24 Technical Committee for consideration as an openly available international standard, adds the release.

SMPTE has stated that Microsoft employees have played a significant role in SMPTE technology committees over the last few years. This has helped SMPTE address the convergence of computer and video technologies. The creation of an international standard based on this compression technology means there will be new choices for organisations that are strongly committed to the use of open standards and to those looking for the maximum level of interoperability in their products.

Arkemedia is announcing the use of Windows Media 9 Series in its latest digital asset management projects that deliver the best-quality images, quality playback experience and extensibility combined with ingest, tag, cataloguing and shared retrieving of vast information, all contained within a single system both with Granada Visual and the British Film Institute.

BBC Technology's Colledia is meant for production and the prototype Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 Series. Digital Rapids is announcing Windows Media 9 Series support in its new CarbonHD Technology Platform for SD and HD video capture and playback. Windows Media 9 Series is helping Digital Rapids open new markets for high-definition video by further reducing storage and bandwidth requirements, making it possible to work with high-definition video over existing networks.

TWI Interactive has come out with the Interactive Content Factory (ICF) Workgroup Edition. This system is designed to streamline the content-production process using Windows Media 9 Series to provide high-quality video proxy logging and editing for delivery to televisions, PCs and mobile devices. The video compression technology of Windows Media 9 Series has the quality and efficiency to meet the ever-increasing requirements of real-time professional encoding for broadcasters. The release informs that broadcast systems hardware companies Duma Video, Harmonic and Tandberg Television are announcing support for Windows Media 9 Series in their professional encoding products.

Duma Video has come out with a prototype of the broadcast industry's first single-chip, real-time HD encoder using Windows Media 9 Series and PCI card reference design. This design allows low-power encoding on stand-alone boxes as well as real-time encoding and editing of HD content on a PC.

Tandberg Television is launching the Tandberg EN5920, a professional broadcast-quality encoding platform for Windows Media 9 Series. This is the result of an engineering collaboration between the two companies. In addition, Tandberg Television is now actively developing a high-definition encoding platform for Windows Media 9 Series.