Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ogg Vorbis Players?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-the-doityerselfers-out-there dept.

TokyoBoy asks: "I have been looking at in-dash mp3 head units and changers lately. However, its occured to me that I would much rather make Ogg/Vorbis files instead of mp3s now. Does anyone know of any hardware manufacturers who plan on supporting the Ogg/Vorbis format in either portable or car stereo equipment?" I would figure this wouldn't be so hard to add on support to some of those Linux-based players out there. There has been a lot of press about the Empeg Car MP3 player (now RioCar...here's hoping that these units are still as flexible as they always were), over the past year, and Slashdot did this MP3 player project which also might proove to be a good starting point. If anyone out there has done this already, please share your experiences.

4 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Dadio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    The FAQ on the Vorbis site refers to this

  2. Hip Zip? by Sloppy · · Score: 3

    The only one I have heard of is the IOMega Hip Zip, which will supposedly support Vorbis in the future which is useless if you want one now. (And also useless if you're in the majority that thinks 40 Megabyte media are too small.)


    ---
    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  3. Re:It's pointless by OverCode@work · · Score: 3

    Umm, right. There's already a popular product, so nobody else should even try to come up with something better. With that kind of attitude we'd still be living in the dark ages.

    Vorbis may not be as popular as MP3, but it's technically superior, and it works, right now. The compression and sound quality are excellent. The people behind it are working hard to have support included in popular players, and have even written a firmware update for the HipZip portable player to add Vorbis support (I just bought one of these players, and the Vorbis update does indeed work). Furthermore, Ogg Vorbis is not patented, and you don't have to pay royalties to anyone to use it (whereas Thompson charges significant royalties for MP3-related products).

    So yes, it's the underdog compared to MP3, but it's far from through. With the attitude of "it's not the most popular and therefore it's pointless", though, we have little to look forward to in this world.

    -John

  4. Re:It's pointless (NOT) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    Ogg Vorbis has one feature that none of the other formats can boast, and it's one that makes a big difference for me. It's called bitrate peeling, and it basically allows you to encode a track at an archival bitrate (say 192kbps) and derive a lower-bitrate version from that archival file on-the-fly without re-encoding. This is particularly useful if you want to cram a lot of songs on a portable player (where 128kbps is more than enough if, for example, you go for a run) but you don't want to keep an extra low-rate version of every track on your hard drive.

    I would buy any decent portable player for this feature alone. (I've been bugging Sonic Blue -- they make the Rio line of players, most of which are firmware-upgradeable -- about including Ogg support for a while now. If anyone is interested, call or email [see below] and ask them about it. The more interest they get in Ogg, the more likely they will be to consider using it.)

    -cf

    SonicBlue product/technical support: (541) 967-2450 or customersupport@sonicblue.com

    SonicBlue pre-sales/customer support: (800) 468-5846