[vorbis] iCAST Announces Beta Release of Vorbis (fwd)

[Jack Moffitt]

below is the press release that went out today :)

it was great to see a lot of you at the summit today...

jack.

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Beta Version of Vorbis Released, led by iCAST Developers

Free, Open Source Alternative to MP3 Codec Gains Early Support from iCAST,
Sonique, EMusic, Napster, Etrantrum, Panic and XMMS 

 San Diego, CA - June 20, 2000 - Project Vorbis, spearheaded by developers
from iCAST (www.icast.com), an online entertainment and majority-owned
operating company of CMGI, today announced the Beta release of Vorbis, a
high-quality open source audio compression/decompression format (codec) that
is expected to provide a royalty-free alternative to MP3 and other audio
compression formats.  Several leaders in the digital audio player market
have already announced support for Vorbis, including EMusic, Sonique,
Napster, Etrantrum, Panic and XMMS.

Similar to the popular MP3 codec, Vorbis is designed to allow any person or
organization to freely encode audio content and make it available in a
downloadable format.  Individuals or organizations using Vorbis will be able
to develop and market their own Vorbis-based audio players and encoders,
without having to pay costly fees for the Vorbis technology.  

Leading the development of Vorbis are iCAST Vice President of technology
Jack Moffitt, iCAST Senior Applications Developer Chris Montgomery and an
open source team that includes the creators of the Icecast streaming media
server, cdparanoia. 

"Early listening tests of Vorbis show that it provides excellent sound
quality that is comparable, if not superior, to competing formats, and we
haven't even reached our first release," said Moffitt.  "This is a
breakthrough development for companies that are seeking an alternative to
the stringent patent protection and royalty fees enforced by the patent
holders of the popular MP3 file format."

"Napster continues its commitment to support leading music file formats such
as Vorbis," said Shawn Fanning, Founder Napster.  "Vorbis offers great
benefits to musicians who want to share and distribute their music in a cost
effective manner."

"We congratulate the Vorbis team on their dedication to develop an open
source audio format with high quality sound and low cost licensing," said
Steve Grady, vice president of marketing for EMusic.com (Nasdaq: EMUS), the
Internet's leading seller of downloadable music.  "We support all efforts to
make downloadable music easier and more accessible to consumers."

Vorbis has excellent sound quality and cutting edge features, including fast
bitrate scaling, surround channels and sample granularity seek and decode.
Software is available to encode and decode on the Windows 95/98/NT, BeOS,
Linux, Solaris, and *BSD platforms.  Plugins are also available for most
popular MP3 players.

Vorbis 1.0 is expected to be released in approximately one month.  To find
more information on Vorbis, including samples and details on how to support
it in your content or media player, visit the beta site at: www.vorbis.com

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