Ogg Vorbis Gaining Industry Support

An anonymous reader writes "While Ogg Vorbis format has not gained much adoption in music sales and portable players, it is not an unsupported format in the industry. Toy manufacturers (e.g. speaking dolls), voice warning systems, and reactive audio devices exploit Ogg Vorbis for its good quality at small bit-rates. As a sign of this, VLSI Solution Oy has just announced VS1000, the first 16 bits DSP device for playing Ogg Vorbis on low-power and high-volume products. Earlier Ogg Vorbis chips use 32 bits for decoding, which consumes more energy than a 16-bit device does. See the Xiph wiki page for a list of Ogg Vorbis chips."

Comments

Re:money talks

[Technician]

It is no longer a dime anymore. The IC prices are not listed online, but the per device prices are for hardware items.

http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/hardware.html

At the bottom of the page is tha item that unless you buy chips with the license, the minimum for doing it yourself is $15,000 USD. If you are making a limited quanity of an item, the minimum can be a showstopper unless you buy chips from someone else, which may also be a little expensive. Dropping MP3 can save a chunk of change since a free alternative exists.

It's the PNG/GIF thing all over again.

Re:MP3 License

[MBCook]

I think this is the whole reason. If someone is looking for a chip that does Ogg, they can choose this one. If they are looking for a chip that does MP3, they can choose this one.

Business wise, which is better? Selling an MP3 decoder chip for $0.10 each (just a guess), or selling an MP3/Ogg decoder chip for $0.10 each? Since there are no patents, adding Ogg support is free, but adds value. Lots of people may want chips that can play MP3s (GPS, Cell Phones, MP3 players, calculators, EVERYTHING plays MP3s), but how many would buy a chip that only did Ogg? I doubt that market is nearly as large. Added value.

That's my guess. Your product (possibly with a little bit of extra programming) could even use both. MP3 for things you want at a higher quality, Ogg for things less important. Maybe you are upgrading your old product. You can keep all the old samples MP3 and just add the new samples as Ogg. Who knows.