Rendering Multimedia Content

Abstract

Today’s consumers increasingly demand the rich multimedia experience to which they’re accustomed from their personal computers or other devices, including mobile wireless terminals and portable media players. At the same time, both to sate this demand and distinguish a product from its competition, manufacturers increasingly invest money in developing rich multimedia interfaces for their product. While pundits may argue that much of this investment has been gratuitous—little of the glitz and glamour of a cell phone’s user interface today is truly necessary to make a call, for example—much of it has not. Multimedia applications, from pedestrian audio and video playback to sophisticated data-visualization applications, can both differentiate products and add value. Through standardization efforts such as JSR 135, which defines the MMAPI, and JSR 287, which defines support for Scalable 2D Vector Graphics, Java ME provides a wealth of interfaces that enable you to build multimedia-rich applications.