[Vorbis] A Macromedia Shockwave Flash-based Ogg player?

[Ulrich Windl]

On 15 Jan 2007 at 13:26, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:

> Ulrich Windl wrote:
> > Helix Realplayer plays Vorbis (in Linux at least), so what is the whole discussion 
> > about? If you want to hear Vorbis, you can. There are also Vorbis add-ons for 
> > Windows Media Player, so what?
> 
> So, why is it that it took YouTube to make Internet video a reality?
> 
> Zero install.

You mean "zero post install". Without a bunch of plugins it wouldn't work, right?

> 
> 99.9% of end users are unable to do anything other than click a link. 
> Launching anything is a big lose.  Installing something is instant death.

That would be an argument against any file format Microsoft Windows (Windows 
Explorer) doesn't support out of the box.

> 
> Flash provided a codec that every end user had.  YouTube converted any 
> uploaded video into that really crappy format.  Viola!  Instant revolution.

Actually my PC doesn't have a flash player.

> 
> Even WMV via plugin wasn't fast/convenient/ubiquitous enough to 
> kickstart everything.  Think about that.
> 
> Ogg is so far down from that in convenience that it simply doesn't exist.
> 
> A script-based Ogg audio decoder is great.  However, it can't cope with 
> video speeds, and it needs a nice, fast, modern machine even for audio.
> 
> People, this isn't a technical problem.  It's a marketing problem.  And 
> Ogg desperately needs to do some marketing.

Actually I think if the project had a more professional release and documentation 
strategy (That is publish release notes plus up-to-date specs that are 
understandable for everyone interested), there would be more people taking the 
file format more seriously. To a product manager for audio players (for example) 
it looks much more than a few peoples' hobby rather than a new serious audio file 
specification.

Isn't that the problem?

Regards,
Ulrich