Thanks oqwarrior for the heads up on this update over at Paul Thurrotts Winsupersite.
Heres a snip: Microsoft introduced "Corona," its next generation of Windows Media technologies, at the Streaming Media East 2001 conference in New York, but because of the surprise early birth of my second child, Kelly, I wasn"t able to attend. So I got a Corona demonstration a month later at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and came away impressed.
Microsoft is creating a next-generation Windows Media platform, code-named Corona. Microsoft says that it hasn"t settled on a final name yet, but that they"d prefer that I didn"t refer to it as Windows Media version 9, though that"s what it is (Windows Media 8 client bits shipped with Windows XP last October; there were no Windows Media 8 server bits). What they will tell me is that the codecs might be updated significantly, which would require player upgrades. This contrasts to Windows Media 8, which didn"t require such an upgrade. Whatever happens, the company expects Corona to deliver 20 percent better efficiency on audio and video performance when compared to Windows Media 8.