[Icecast] Still the big Icecast problem!

[Ralph Giles]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2004 at 10:47:52AM -0800, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:

> If propagation of Ogg Vorbis is the (or a)  goal of Icecast then 
> probably the best strategy is to build an embedded Ogg Flash Player of 
> some sort, so that people unwittingly become Ogg users without lifting 
> a finger, and broadcasters can start using it without fear that they'll 
> lose listeners due to their protocol choice.  I've been streaming for 
> more than 7 years now with Quicktime, Shoutcast, and most recently 
> Icecast and it's been interesting to see how the technologies in the 
> space have vied for dominance, ultimately ceding to MP3.

Yes, of course. This is up to Macromedia; they're the ones distributing 
the flash plugins. Please tell them you want Ogg Vorbis support and why.
You might have better luck getting it is as part of Ogg Theora (video) 
support since they can use the quality lift rather more on that side.

There are java player applets, as has been mentioned.

> So... what would make me as a professional broadcaster seriously 
> consider Ogg?  Two things:

You've only mentioned quality. Are license fees not an issue for you?
 
When Vorbis was first released 4 years ago, we expected this to be the 
major thing driving adoption. The business case for internet webcast 
had such a fine margin that the MP3 royalties nearly killed it. Of 
course, in the US as least, the recording industry's punitive copyright 
royalties pretty much made up for the savings Vorbis offerred, so things
still went nowhere. I don't know what happened in other countries; maybe 
the whole idea was just a .com-era experiment no one else tried.

> In any case I share your pain because I'm frustrated with MP3 streaming 
> and would like to see Ogg Vorbis more widely used.

Well, do what you can. It takes a village to build Rome. :-)

 -r