Introduction
Creative may just have the best application of 3D on the Web today, and it’s all about audio.
Irrespective of anything Creative Labs may do, it remains best known an audio powerhouse in the PC world. Therefore, it only seems fitting that the company’s found a way to exploit its graphics hardware by applying 3D to downloadable music files. I’ll put it in a nutshell, but you can get the details by visiting www.lava.com.
At Lava you’ll find a Lava Player, which is free for download. Download an MP3 file from this site, and then watch a real-time 3D groove festival. It’s one of those things that some will find quaint, and some will find irritating. Imagine a real-time 3D video attached to any music you download off of the Web. The graphics and audio will probably work best on a Creative product, but you are by no means limited to using Blaster products. Just pay attention to the relative simplicity of the idea and its implementation.
Before we get into the interesting dynamics of the software I should point out why I am so enthusiastic about Lava. I tend to believe that the distribution of audio is much more interesting than video. Video content is already distributed in an adequate manner. Some of you call it television, some cable. The point being that you can get video content delivered to your home, you do get it to delivered to your home, and you use it regularly. When it comes to audio, the situation is a bit more complicated. There’s radio, but how many of us really have the radio on in the house? Radio’s in cars, yes, but rarely in competition with the television. We do, on the other hand, play music off of CDs, and tapes. Obviously, audio distribution has very limited direct channels into the home, especially high quality audio.
Audio is something that is cheap to produce, and yet, it still commands as much premium as video. You pay about the same for a good audio CD as you do for a copy of a movie VHS tape, or DVD disk. It is also very apparent that downloadable music holds a great deal of appeal. Taking Creative’s Lava approach, the addition of a 3D graphical interface to downloadable music takes into the visual realm, and opens up a number of marketing opportunities, particularly for MP3 enthusiasts, struggling artists, or independent music labels. Lava makes it possible for bands to go MTV.
There are an enormous amount of possibilities, and frankly, I haven’t seen a better application of 3D graphics on the Web. I mean, this is accessible to anyone that’s interested in music. If Creative can deliver effective content creation tools, and allow content developers to create sophisticated animations, and scenes to go with their downloadable music then, they might have the next craze in Internet media. At Comdex, Creative laid out some of their immediate plans for Lava, and I think it makes for a compelling Internet strategy. The tools, the player, and the potential for online music creators is going to be there. Check it out. If you can get beyond the hype, and cute Web site design, there is some very interesting underlying technology. Maybe, the killer app of 3D is audio.
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