Speaking of open formats, I've been doing a little digging on Ogg
Vorbis. I had originally stated that Ogg Vorbis was far from a
standard, and it would take a long time for it to be widely accepted.
I would now like to happily report that I was wrong. There seems to be
quite a bit of support out there for OV, not just on Linux, but also
on Windows. I found several CD rippers that had OV support, including
one that will convert .wma (Windows Media files) to Ogg format. There
are also several players and encoders available. I also found
apache_mod_mp3 (http://software.tangent.org/projects.pl) that turns
apache into a streaming server, and it is planned to add OV support
soon (although the README says that it already does).
Given the push for multimedia delivery over the web, and the growing
support for interpretability, how long will it take for Vorbis to
become the standard? As I said, there are already quite a few tools
out there that have added support for it. Besides, the breakdown right
now is this: Microsoft gives away their server, but require an
exclusivity contract in return (you also need a Windows server, IIS,
BackOffice, Encoding software, etc.). RealMedia servers are costly as
are their encoding tools. Thomson Multimedia is going to be charging
companies who want to stream MP3's upto 3%. Ogg Vorbis is a completely
open format, with free delivery tools, encoders and players, plugins
for major players (Winamp, XMMS, FreeAmp, etc.), and can be streamed
free of charge from your existing Apache server infrastructure. There
is also Ogg Tarkin in the works, which is the video component to Ogg.
I think that the Ogg project may take over the web in the same way
that Apache did. All it needs now is some good press and a few major
players to start using it.
C-Ya,
Kenny
P.S. What other formats/functions need an open source counterpart to
become a standard?
--
---------------------------------------------------
Kenneth E. Lussier
Geek by nature, Linux by choice
PGP KeyID 0xD71DF198
Public key available @ http://pgp.mit.edu
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