REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 7, 2003 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft® Plus! Digital Media Edition, the ultimate photo, music and movie enhancement pack for Windows®
XP, is available today at noon PST for download and purchase by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/plus/. PC manufacturers and retailers are embracing Plus! Digital Media Edition, as HP today becomes the first major OEM to distribute this new Windows XP enhancement pack to its customers, joining License Technologies Group Inc. (LTG), the first Microsoft-authorized Web retailer for Plus! Digital Media Edition. Also today, consumers can visit h http://www.microsoft.com/plus/ and see comedian and author Al Franken and baseball great Yogi Berra tell the stories behind their personal photos using Plus! Photo Story, a new feature in Plus! Digital Media Edition.
“Plus! Digital Media Edition represents tremendous value for consumers who want to enhance their digital photo, music and home video experiences,”
said Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft.
“For example, tens of millions of people have taken digital photos over the recent holiday season, and the new Plus! Photo Story feature enables them to tell the story behind those photos to friends and family around the world.”
Creating New Experiences With Digital Media on the PC
Plus! Digital Media Edition includes a broad range of new features and tools to provide new experiences for anyone who enjoys digital photography, digital music and home video, and taking content on the go.
Digital photo buffs will enjoy Plus! Photo Story, which creates a whole new way to enjoy and share digital photos, enabling users to build unique digital photo albums with narration and music, and even automatically add motion to the photos via pan and zoom effects that make photos come to life in a file size small enough to share via e-mail or over the Web.
Digital media aficionados will love Plus! Digital Media Edition’s great assortment of features and tools, including these:
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Plus! Party Mode turns the PC into the ultimate party jukebox, complete with visual effects, song and artist displays, and an interactive guest book, while restricting access to personal files and information.
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Plus! Dancer turns the desktop into a dance floor with more than 10 lifelike, high-definition 3-D dancers that groove in time to the music that’s playing.
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Plus! Analog Recorder enables users to easily create clean, vibrant digital copies of their aging vinyl records or cassette tapes using automatic hiss and pop reduction and automatic track-splitting.
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Plus! Audio Converter is a general-purpose conversion tool offering easy interchange between formats and bit rates. Files can be converted from MP3 and WAV to Windows Media®
Audio (WMA) or from WMA to MP3 (if a compatible MP3 encoding plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 Series is installed). -
With Plus! CD Label Maker, users can create and print CD covers and labels in just four easy steps.
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The Plus! Alarm Clock turns the PC into a full-featured alarm clock that can play music from a user’s library of favorite tunes.
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The Plus! Sleep Timer allows users to fall asleep to the music they choose by gradually decreasing volume over time to provide an enjoyable entry into a good night’s sleep.
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Plus! Digital Media Edition also adds eight new, high-quality skins for Windows Media Player 9 Series , giving users more choices for personalizing their player.
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Home movie fans will enjoy 50 stunning new effects and transitions , created by Pixelan Software LLC, for Windows Movie Maker 2 for Windows XP , the completely redesigned video-editing feature for Windows XP that takes fast and easy home video creation to a whole new level.
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Pocket PC users will enjoy Plus! Sync & Go for Pocket PC ,* which enables them to automatically synchronize the latest digital content from their Media Library in Windows Media Player 9 Series and leading content providers directly to their Pocket PC. Users can enjoy timely content on the go from leading news sources such as CBS MarketWatch, MSNBC.com and NPR, as well as other great content providers such as Comedy Central, GolfSpan.com Inc., Indy Racing League, KenRadio.com, OverDrive Inc. and Warner Music Group.
Availability
Plus! Digital Media Edition is available for download at noon PST today for an estimated retail price of $19.95 (U.S.) by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/plus/. It will be in stores where Windows XP is available in early 2003. Plus! Digital Media Edition will be made available in French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. The first Microsoft-authorized Web retailer for Plus! Digital Media Edition, LTG, is joined today by HP, the first major OEM to distribute Plus! Digital Media Edition to its customers.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
* Microsoft Windows Powered Pocket PC with Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 software, or Compaq iPAQ with Microsoft Pocket PC 2000 software
Microsoft, Windows and Windows Media are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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