[Advocacy] iAudio X5 says it supports "Ogg" not "Vorbis"

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Hello all,

I was having a look at the iAudio X5, being one of the few portable
music players which support Vorbis files, and was incredibly impressed.

I did note, however, that in the manual etc. where it said which file
formats it supported, it did not say that it supported 'Vorbis' or
'Ogg-Vorbis' but instead had a diamond with 'Ogg' inside.

It is my understanding that the Xiph Foundation intends to take a hard
line with its trademark policy to ensure that players do not market
themselves as supporting a format and not do so correctly. I think that
it is going to be very confusing for end users to understand the
distinction between the containers and the formats if players are lax in
their advertising.

Perhaps it is important for the Xiph foundation to design some nice
little logos for this kind of situation to make things clearer:
- a logo for each codec with the proper name inside ('Ogg Vorbis' etc);
- an 'Ogg' or 'Xiph' Audio logo to show that the player implements all
the Audio codecs properly;
- a complete 'Ogg' or 'Xiph' logo to show that the player implements all
the Audio and Video codecs properly.

The last two could be pushed alongside the 'framework' (or whatever)
that I understand is being developed.

If Xiph doesn't actually enforce its trademarks properly then it will
suffer from the same fate as Xvid: a million players which say they play
the files, a million encoders for the format but precious few
combinations which result in a movie playing on the screen.

That said, everyone may be quite comfortable calling Vorbis 'Ogg' for
the sake of the media, but I think the branding should be considered and
protected even more than a for-profit: the only control which Xiph has
left over the formats are its trademarks.

I'm sure that sending iAudio a swanky new logo wouldn't upset them in
the slightest; if they start supporting Theora as well then perhaps they
can say that they support 'Ogg' ;)!

Regards,

Aaron

--
http://www.whitehouse.org.nz
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