[icecast] bit/bytes

[MacSym]

Hi Dale,

I agree with you but how do you suggest convincing these software companies
to implement ogg support in their players? I can imagine Itunes and XMMS but
it's going to be harder for Windows Media Player and Winamp. Microsoft is
promoting its very own WMA. I guess they implemented mp3 because it was
already too popular to reject it. About Winamp, I don't know if Nullsoft is
going to support ogg because Icecast would create a bigger competition to
Shoutcast...
Anyway, there are very good news, I think Real is going to implement ogg in
its next version of RealOne. It might already be available in RealOne2 beta,
but I didn't test it yet. It's a good start because Real is very popular
(installed on 57% of computers...). Also a good point would be some hardware
devices supporting ogg (mp3 players...), but I guess it is a second step:
first software support, then hardware.

Cheers,

MAX

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-icecast at xiph.org [mailto:owner-icecast at xiph.org] On Behalf Of
Dale Ghent
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 10:53 PM
To: icecast at xiph.org
Subject: RE: [icecast] bit/bytes

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, oddsock wrote:

> Additionally, smaller broadcasters (with not as much momentum as DI for
> instance) can also deal with costs by <plug> using open-source  software
> such as icecast, coupled with patent/royalty-free codecs like vorbis which
> provide great sounding streams at half the bandwidth requirements of
> mp3.</plug>

All very true points (and that goes for the parts of your email I did not
quote here as well)

But Ogg Vorbis, for all it's quality and capabilities, is going to
continue to be limited to a comparatively small following of people.

Lets not forget that many of our listeners are not as technically inclined
as we'd like them to be. Many will look at you like you have five heads if
you ask them if they know what a "codec" is. Grandma just wants to go to
her NPR webcast station, click [>] and hear something. Confront her with
a "Unknown MIME Type: audio/ogg" message and she'll likely not realize
that she needs to download a plugin for whatever player she's happening
to use, which would likely what ever came as a part of the OS on the
computer she bought from Dell or HP. Worst case is that she decides it's
not worth the trouble and picks up her knitting. That's one less listener
for the webcaster.

My point in this is that Ogg Vorbis needs a long-overdue shot in the arm
in terms of marketting. That is, marketting to the people who supply the
popular media apps... Apple and iTunes. Microsoft Media Player. Audion.
WinAMP.

/dale
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