Real Will Include Ogg Vorbis Support

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.

Comments

Anybody

[scott1853]

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?

Re:Anybody

[Anonvmous Coward]

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

Re:Anybody

[jandrese]

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.

Hardware Acceptance

[Bonker]

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.

Re:Hardware Acceptance

[Neon Spiral Injector]

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.

now all that's left is for iTunes to support it

[krog]

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

A geek format... damn cool, but a geek format...

[RinkSpringer]

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.

Re:Day late. Dollar short.

[garett_spencley]

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

Re:I'd try Ogg Vorbis ...

[tswinzig]

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?!

Re:Ahh, but you forgot one thing....

[RadioheadKid]

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...