@tempusfuzit wrote:
@marvin_martian wrote:
Actually, the Zune players do support AAC. Sansa would have to pay a licensing fee to support AAC, which a Sansa employee here said they would not do.
Good point about the Zune. Microsoft would still have a motive for deterring others from supporting AAC, since it gives the Zune an advantage.
As to the licensing fee, evidently they must pay it for the View, since that supports AAC. Perhaps then the reasoning behind lack of AAC on the Fuze is a marketing ploy to get people to spend the extra for a View?
The Zune and View both support MPEG4 video+audio, and thus have MPEG4 AAC licenses from the video decoder. AAC audio files (which are really just MPEG4 video files with no video track) are therefore “free”. The Fuze does MPEG4 video, but only using MPEG1 Audio, presumably to avoid the expense of having to pay for both MPEG1 and MPEG4 licenses.
