Freeware is software , most often proprietary , that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user . There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license , or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification , redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software , which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models .
34-682: DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A ) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD . DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format. The standard was published in March 1999 and the first discs entered the marketplace in 2000. DVD-Audio was in a format war with Super Audio CD (SACD), and along with consumers' tastes tending towards downloadable music, these factors meant that neither high-quality disc achieved considerable market traction; DVD-Audio has been described as "extinct" by 2007. DVD-Audio remains
68-433: A CD/DVD package or as a DualDisc. DVD-Audio discs may optionally employ a copy protection mechanism called Content Protection for Prerecorded Media (CPPM). CPPM, managed by the 4C Entity , was designed to prevent users from extracting audio to computers and portable media players. Because DVD-Video's content-scrambling system (CSS) was quickly broken, the proposed launch of DVD-Audio was postponed from Autumn 1999 and
102-571: A DVD-Video format recording on one side and DVD-Audio on the other, CD/DVD packages, which can include the album on both CD and DVD-Audio, or DualDisc , which can contain DVD-Audio content on the DVD side. In addition, some titles that had been initially released as a standalone DVD-Audio disc (such as The Grateful Dead 's American Beauty and R.E.M. 's Automatic for the People ) were re-released as
136-477: A decoder to hear all four tracks. Despite this, the format is playable on any LP turntable. This audio format famously caused controversy among recording companies when released due to the potential of perfect digital copies to increase piracy Freeware The term freeware was coined in 1982 by Andrew Fluegelman , who wanted to sell PC-Talk , the communications application he had created, outside of commercial distribution channels. Fluegelman distributed
170-566: A legal safe and internationally law domains respecting way. The typical freeware use case "share" can be further refined with Creative Commons restriction clauses like non-commerciality ( CC BY-NC ) or no- derivatives ( CC BY-ND ), see description of licenses . There are several usage examples , for instance The White Chamber , Mari0 or Assault Cube , all freeware by being CC BY-NC-SA licensed with only non-commercial sharing allowed. Freeware cannot economically rely on commercial promotion. In May 2015 advertising freeware on Google AdWords
204-468: A license, but displays advertising to either cover development costs or as a means of income. Registerware forces the user to subscribe with the publisher before being able to use the product. While commercial products may require registration to ensure licensed use , registerware do not. Shareware permits redistribution, but the license only allows limited use before paying the license fee. Some features may be disabled prior to payment, in which case it
238-400: A niche market but some independent online labels offer a wider choice of titles. DVD-Audio offers many possible configurations of audio channels , ranging from single-channel mono to 5.1-channel surround sound , at various sampling frequencies and sample rates. (The ".1" denotes a low-frequency effects channel (LFE) for bass and/or special audio effects.) Compared to the compact disc ,
272-560: A promotion for the premium version. The two often share a code base, using a compiler flag to determine which is produced. For example, BBEdit has a BBEdit Lite edition which has fewer features. XnView is available free of charge for personal use but must be licensed for commercial use. The "free" version may be advertising supported, as was the case with the DivX . Ad-supported software and registerware also bear resemblances to freeware. Ad-supported software does not ask for payment for
306-405: A single entity to be responsible for updating and enhancing the product, which is then given away without charge. Other freeware projects are simply released as one-off programs with no promise or expectation of further development. These may include source code , as does free software, so that users can make any required or desired changes themselves, but this code remains subject to the license of
340-425: Is a medium for sound recording and reproduction . The term is applied to both the physical recording media and the recording formats of the audio content —in computer science it is often limited to the audio file format , but its wider use usually refers to the physical method used to store the data. Note on the use of analog compared to digital in this list; the definition of digital used here for early formats
374-532: Is a member of the DVD family, a single disc can have multiple layers, and even two sides that contain audio and video material. A common configuration is a single-sided DVD with content in both the DVD-Video (VIDEO_TS) and DVD-Audio (AUDIO_TS) directories. The high-resolution, Packed PCM audio encoded using MLP is only playable by DVD players containing DVD-Audio decoding capability. DVD-Video content, which can include LPCM, Dolby or DTS material, and even video, makes
SECTION 10
#1732791178047408-450: Is also possible to link directly into a Video_TS directory that might contain video tracks, as well as PCM stereo and other "bonus" features. With the introduction of the DVD-Audio format, some kind of backward compatibility with existing DVD-Video players was desired, although not required. To address this, most DVD-Audio discs also contain DVD-Video compatible data to play the standard DVD-Video Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio track on
442-534: Is compromised, that key can be rendered useless for decrypting future DVD-Audio discs. DVD-Audio discs can also utilize digital watermarking technology developed by the Verance Corporation , typically embedded into the audio once every thirty seconds. If a DVD-Audio player encounters a watermark on a disc without a valid MKB, it will halt playback. The 4C Entity also developed a similar specification, Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM), which
476-484: Is done by a commercial software player which has been patched to allow access to the unprotected audio. In 2007 the encryption scheme was overcome with a tool called dvdcpxm . On 12 February 2008 a program called DVD-Audio Explorer was released, containing the aforementioned libdvdcpxm coupled with an open-source MLP decoder. Like DVD-Video decryption, such tools may be illegal to use in the United States under
510-654: Is not allowed to be delivered via unencrypted digital audio link at sample rates higher than 48 kHz (i.e., ordinary DVD-Video quality) due to concerns about digital copying. However, encrypted digital formats have now been approved by the DVD Forum, the first of which was Meridian Audio's MHR (Meridian High Resolution). The High Definition Multimedia Interface ( HDMI 1.1) also allows encrypted digital audio to be carried up to DVD-Audio specification (6 × 24-bit/96 kHz channels or 2 × 24-bit/192 kHz channels). The six channels of audio information can thus be sent to
544-629: Is possible to get up to 96/16 or 48/24 in 5.1, and 192/24 in stereo. To store 5.1 tracks in 88.2/20, 88.2/24, 96/20 or 96/24 MLP encoding is mandatory. If no native stereo audio exists on the disc, the DVD-Audio player may be able to downmix the 5.1-channel audio to two-channel stereo audio if the listener does not have a surround sound setup (provided that the coefficients were set in the stream at authoring). Downmixing can only be done to two-channel stereo, not to other configurations, such as 4.0 quad. DVD-Audio may also feature menus, text subtitles, still images and video, plus in high end authoring systems it
578-431: Is sometimes known as crippleware. Both freeware and shareware sometimes have a limited evaluation period, after which the software is automatically disabled or starts displaying a request to pay a registration fee. In the latter case it is colloquially known as nagware. The Creative Commons offer licenses , applicable to all by copyright governed works including software, which allow a developer to define "freeware" in
612-410: Is that which is represented using discrete values rather than fluctuating variables. A piano roll is digital as it has discrete values, that being a hole for each key, unlike a phonograph record which is analog with a fluctuating groove. Music is recorded and distributed using a variety of audio formats, some of which store additional information. Recorded two tracks on both stereo channels, requiring
646-653: Is typically proprietary and distributed without source code. By contrast, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedoms granted users under the software license (for example, to run the program for any purpose, modify and redistribute the program to others), and such software may be sold at a price. According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), "freeware" is a loosely defined category and it has no clear accepted definition, although FSF asks that free software (libre; unrestricted and with source code available) should not be called freeware. In contrast
680-405: Is used on Secure Digital cards . DVD-Audio's copy protection was overcome in 2005 by tools which allow data to be decrypted or converted to 6 channel .WAV files without going through lossy digital-to-analog conversion. Previously that conversion had required expensive equipment to retain all six channels of audio rather than having it downmixed to stereo. In the digital method, the decryption
714-611: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act . While the Recording Industry Association of America has been successful in keeping these tools off Web sites, they are still distributed on P2P file sharing networks and newsgroups. Additionally, in 2007 the widely used commercial software DVDFab Platinum added DVD-Audio decryption, allowing users to back up a full DVD-A image to an ISO image file . Audio format An audio format
SECTION 20
#1732791178047748-528: The Free Software Foundation calls free software , the author of freeware usually restricts the rights of the user to use, copy, distribute, modify, make derivative works, or reverse engineer the software. The software license may impose additional usage restrictions; for instance, the license may be "free for private, non-commercial use" only, or usage over a network, on a server, or in combination with certain other software packages may be prohibited. Restrictions may be required by license or enforced by
782-487: The Oxford English Dictionary simply characterizes freeware as being "available free of charge (sometimes with the suggestion that users should make a donation to the provider)". Some freeware products are released alongside paid versions that either have more features or less restrictive licensing terms. This approach is known as freemium ("free" + "premium"), since the "free" version is intended as
816-400: The amplifier by several different methods: Researchers in 2004 found that, amongst a selected group of listeners on a selected playback setup, no perceptible difference was reported in audio quality between DVD-A and SACD. The claimed benefits of high-resolution audio , such as that supported by DVD-A, are the subject of controversy (see High-resolution audio § Controversy ). Four of
850-545: The channels of a track can be split into two groups stored at different resolutions. For example, the front speakers could be 96/24, while the surrounds are 48/20. Audio is stored on the disc in Linear PCM format, which is either uncompressed or losslessly compressed with MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) . The maximum permissible total bit rate is 9.6 Megabits per second. Channel/resolution combinations that would exceed this need to be compressed. In uncompressed modes, it
884-399: The disc (which can be downmixed to two channels for listeners with no surround sound setup). Many DVD-Video players also offer the option to create a Dolby MP matrix-encoded soundtrack for older surround sound systems lacking Dolby Digital or DTS decoding. Some discs also include a native Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, and even a DTS 96/24 5.1-channel, audio track. Since the DVD-Audio format
918-720: The disc compatible with all DVD players. Other disc configurations may consist of double layer DVDs (DVD-9) or two-sided discs (DVD-10, DVD-14 or DVD-18). Some labels have released two-sided DVD titles that contain DVD-Audio content on one side and DVD-Video content on the other, the Classic Records HDAD being one such example. Unofficial playback of DVD-Audio on a PC is possible through freeware audio player foobar2000 for Windows using an open source plug-in extension called DVDADecoder. VLC media player has DVD-Audio support Cyberlink's PowerDVD Version 8 provides an official method of playing DVD-Audio discs. This feature
952-547: The major music labels , Universal Music , EMI , Warner Bros. Records , Naxos Records and several smaller audiophile labels (such as AIX Records , Claudio Records, DTS Entertainment, Silverline Records, OgreOgress Productions, Tacet and Teldec ) have released albums on DVD-Audio, but the number is minimal compared to standard CDs. New high-definition titles have been released in standard DVD-Video format (which can contain two-channel Linear PCM audio data ranging from 48 kHz/16-bit to 96 kHz/24-bit), "HDAD", which includes
986-408: The much higher capacity DVD format enables the inclusion of either: Audio on a DVD-Audio disc can be stored in many different bit depth/sampling rate/channel combinations: Different bit depth/sampling rate/channel combinations can be used on a single disc. For instance, a DVD-Audio disc may contain a 96 kHz/24-bit 5.1-channel audio track as well as a 192 kHz/24-bit stereo audio track. Also,
1020-475: The music labels stalled software production while DVD-Audio's developers sought a better method of blocking unauthorized duplications. They developed CPPM, which uses a media key block (MKB) to authenticate DVD-Audio players. In order to decrypt the audio, players must obtain a media key from the MKB, which also is encrypted. The player must use its own unique key to decrypt the MKB. If a DVD-Audio player's decryption key
1054-481: The program via the same process as shareware . As software types can change, freeware can change into shareware. In the 1980s and 1990s, the term freeware was often applied to software released without source code . Freeware software is available for use without charge and typically has limited functionality with a more capable version available commercially or as shareware. It is typically fully functional for an unlimited period of time. In contrast to what
DVD-Audio - Misplaced Pages Continue
1088-464: The software itself; e.g., the package may fail to function over a network. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines "open source software" (i.e., free software or free and open-source software), as distinct from "freeware" or "shareware"; it is software where "the Government does not have access to the original source code". The "free" in "freeware" refers to the price of the software, which
1122-449: Was dropped from version 9 onwards. Creative also provide a dedicated DVD-Audio player with some of its Soundblaster Audigy and X-Fi cards. In order to play DVD-Audio, a preamplifier or surround controller with six analog inputs was originally required. Whereas DVD-Video audio formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS can be sent via the player's digital output to a receiver for conversion to analog form and distribution to speakers, DVD-Audio
1156-509: Was restricted to "authoritative source"[s]. Thus web sites and blogs are the primary resource for information on which freeware is available, useful, and is not malware . However, there are also many computer magazines or newspapers that provide ratings for freeware and include compact discs or other storage media containing freeware. Freeware is also often bundled with other products such as digital cameras or scanners . Freeware has been criticized as "unsustainable" because it requires
#46953