On 12/6/2005 11:55, Nico R. wrote: > I dislike it being proprietary, yes. The other thing is that I was told > that players not implementing it would (at least in theory) be cheaper. > Well, in this case, that's a non-issue, though ...
Reality is that decoding MP3 can be done royalty free. Most if not all portable music players today are made with standard DSP chips which have the MP3 decoding built in. AFAIK, it takes custom firmware development to be able to support things like Ogg and Flac and others so the opposite is what is true. Small stick shaped flash players now have only a very small price increase over a same sized plain memory stick. When you see a creative labs player all you are essentially getting is some generic thing with their name on it. All the code inside comes from the hardware designers or elsewhere. The only thing they have to do with it is choosing from a punch-list of features and physical appearance. BTW, the only reason you see WMA (which probably less ppl use than Ogg even) supported in these things is because M$ is trying to be the dominant format over MP3. Therefore, they pay the chip designers to put WMA capability into the DSP. M$ probably also supplies them with the firmware code to decode it or supplies them with developers. Ogg designers could do the same thing but, well, they're not a multi-billion $ company The bottom line is that technology is made to get something done, not to further religious viewpoints. You will be waiting until after your death for a player that supports only formats which only a very few people use. Well over 99% of ppl could give a rats ass about quality or real freedom (they just want want want things things things); that's why places like Walmart are so huge. Even people like me, who agree in principle with this viewpoint on the merits of freedom want their devices to work with as many formats as possible, not less. I guess it is a good example of the difference between evangelism (you) and plain worship (me). Everyone can see there are *far* more churchgoers than priests. Pick two from: -low cost -works well -many features (ogg only would be a feature to you I guess) ~Jason -- -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-chat FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
