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Real Will Include Ogg Vorbis Support

Posted by michael on from the sounds-good-to-me dept.

Skuto writes "Following the example of AOL with Winamp, RealNetworks has decided to give Ogg Vorbis their sign of approval and will be including support into their player software. The press release has more information. Meanwhile, independent listening tests are being set up to determine how well Vorbis fares against its competitors WMA, AAC and MP3Pro. You can help by signing up for the tests here." A couple of comments (1, 2) in our previous story provide the best description of what Real is doing, if you missed them.

16 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Anybody by scott1853 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anybody still have Real Player installed? And actually use it for a general player and not just for when certain cites require it for video clips?

    1. Re:Anybody by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah I do... lots of porn uses it.

    2. Re:Anybody by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I just hate how RealOne tries to keep sending data back to Real. I have zone alarm preventing it's connections but it tries to connect every 30 minutes or so. Personally I don't trust Real to not sell my data, so I'm rather hesitant to allow any data back to their servers.

      It's not like there's an option to turn off the reporting either. It also doesn't help that the player has falled for the "skin" diesease. As soon as any program picks up the ability to skin itself it ships with the most god-awful interface possible (witness WMP7), often with a loss of functionality (witness WMP7).

      Finally, here's a hint for you media player writers: do not open webpages automatically (especially "UPGRADE NOW OR THE BUNNY GETS IT" pages) at startup. If I wanted to go to a webpage I would have started my web browser.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  2. Hardware Acceptance by Bonker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Software decoders in Winamp, Real, and hopefully Quicktime is only the first step. Ogg will be in the pink when hardware decoders start showing up in the form of CD MP3 players with Vorbis Support and DVD players that will decode Ogg's as well as MP3's and other formats.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:Hardware Acceptance by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ogg Vorbis on DVD players will be a bit more work for the manufacturers. Don't forget that MP3 is really MPEG Audio Layer 3. By supporting MPEG systems they get automatic MP3 decoder support. If they want to add Ogg Vorbis support that means they'll have to include a totally seperate set of routines in their decoding software.

      Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the support. But we'll probally see it adopted much quicker in dedicated MP3 players first, cause they don't have full MPEG support so they aren't getting something for nothing, they just have custom audio decoding software.

  3. now all that's left is for iTunes to support it by krog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    once iTunes supports Vorbis, then all the major players will support it. that means it will be ubiquitous, and anyone will be able to use .ogg without worrying about if someone has an ogg player.

    talk to Apple if you want to see it happen: feedback page

    --
    Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
  4. What?!? by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    You've got a name like Ischo and you complain that Ogg Vorbis sounds stupid and embarrassing?!?

    --
    Infuriate left and right
  5. A geek format... damn cool, but a geek format... by RinkSpringer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When Ogg Vorbis 1.0 was released, I converted all my audio CD's to Ogg files. It looks as if the Ogg encoder is much faster than LAME with variable bitrate, but I haven't really compared them accurately.

    I fear the issue with Ogg Vorbis is that it is not as known as MP3. OK, so Unreal2 uses Ogg Vorbis... but do you honestly believe most gamers really read the manual, and especially the credits? I wouldn't think so.

    At my work, I told a few employees about Ogg Vorbis, and absolutely no one ever heard about it. Some even said: "Why would I want to use that? I have MP3 and it works fine!". They simply don't care about patents and such, they just want it to work...

    Based upon this, I fear Ogg Vorbis will only be used by geeks. Maybe when major software like Nero can instantly create Ogg files and not just MP3 files when saving tracks, it will be more known by the masses.

  6. Re:I'd try Ogg Vorbis ... by jglow · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think you have other issues. I have no problem saying ogg vorbis simply because people look at me strange when I say it.

    Ogg what?
    Ogg Vorbis

    It'd be different if it was called Barbie's Dream Audio Compression.

    --


    There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
  7. Re:Day late. Dollar short. by leshert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A few years ago, you could have said the same thing about PNG. Now, every major image editor supports it, as do all the major image viewers and web browsers.

    The existence of a defacto standard doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to improve on that standard.

  8. Re:Day late. Dollar short. by garett_spencley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I personally don't really give a shit if little Johnny down the street is using ogg or not.

    What matter to me is wether I'm using ogg or not and at the moment the answer is yes. All of the cds that I rip are ripped into ogg.

    And when I download music I don't care the slightest bit wether it's in mp3 or ogg because if I really like it I'll go buy the album and then I'll rip it into ogg. If I don't like it enough to buy the album then I don't like it enough to want it in a better format either so it doesn't matter.

    The only thing I would like to see regarding ogg is portable ogg players (that also support mp3 of course) and other devices like dvd players etc. But with Real and AOL blessing ogg maybe that's not a pipe dream afterall?

    Just because I prefer a certain format doesn't mean other people need to prefer the same.

    --
    Garett

  9. Re:Open Source wins again by mmurphy_helix · · Score: 4, Informative

    RealNetworks will be releasing the Helix DNA client software as open source in 88 days. This represents a media engine that can be used to build streaming media players. Today's announcement means that Ogg Vorbis support should be ready in time for RealNetworks' own open source release. For more details, visit the Helix Web site! We're interested in collecting input on Helix and what we can do to work better with the open source community.

    --
    ----------
    Mark Murphy, Helix Community Manager
    CollabNet, Inc.
    http://www.helixcommunity.org
  10. Re:Day late. Dollar short. by FatRatBastard · · Score: 4, Informative

    mp3 is alredy the defacto standard for cd-ripping. Support for Ogg is just too late to matter to anyone except for geeks on this site.

    Nope, software developers as well, esp. game developers. You have to pay scratch if your compressed audio is MP3 (good old Thompson Multimedia want their cut), so OGG actually does pretty well in that niche.

  11. Re:I'd try Ogg Vorbis ... by tswinzig · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm hesitent to listen to Ogg Vorbis format files because I would be too embarrassed to have to say "It's Ogg Vorbis" should someone ask me what I'm listening to ...

    I imagine the conversation going like this:

    Joe: Hey Bryan, what are you listening to?

    Bryan: Ogg Vorbis

    Joe: No you fucking idiot, what is the name of the song you're listening to? Who the fuck cares what format you encoded it in?!

    --

    "And like that ... he's gone."
  12. Re:Ahh, but you forgot one thing.... by RadioheadKid · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Based upon this, I fear Ogg Vorbis will only be used by geeks.
    Many people are listeners not rippers. Geeks are the most efficient rippers and propagators of music. Many people don't care what format to which they are listening, as long as it plays in their favorite player. I send files to my friends in Ogg Vorbis format. The first time I sent them, I attached the Winamp plugin. Now, you don't even have to do that, it's included. One of my friends said that he hates when he finishes listening to one of the songs I sent to him and then the next song is an mp3, he realizes how bad a lot of his mp3's sound.

    Now not having a portable Ogg Vorbis player is a whole different story...

    --
    "Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
  13. Real spyware by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Informative

    If your using windows, and you want to disable real spyware, this is how you do it. Ever wonder why real player gives you updates when you tell it not to run on startup?

    Registry Key Location:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\W indows\Curr entVersion\Run
    Key Name: TkBellExe
    Value: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Update_OB\evntsvc.exe -osboot

    delete evntsvc.exe, everything will still function fine.