With software projects like Audion and WinAMP retiring, we are seeing the end of development in music playback software. Not to say it’s dead, but the rate of novel ideas in the field is lowering.
What’s next? Video! I want video on my iPod, dammit! I want to fit a higher quality encoding of a movie into the same standard 700 MB size. I want to see solutions like BitTorrent and Gnutella continue to push the limit of bandwidth efficiency. I want to be able to stream video to any number of others.
DivX and friends have already taken grounds in this new world, but from what I’ve seen of AVC (H.264), we’re only getting started.
