Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on December 21, 2006 06:05 AM
why use MP3 at all?
I'll tell you why. It's because regardless of Fraunhofer; MP3 is the most playable format there is. Regardless of vague threats from Fraunhofer, MP3 can be played by any computer and most importantly it can be played by any portable music player. Does portable music player sound strange? Perhaps that is due to it being more commonly referred to as an MP3 Player!
Most people don;t care about formats. They care about content. They want to be able to play the audio file and if it is an Ogg file there is a 99% chance that they won't be able to play it.
With Ogg, they can't play it on their computer without installing additional software, read pain. With MP3 they already have the software on their system. all they have to do is click the file and it plays!
With Ogg, they can't play it on their MP3 Player. What are the top MP3 players, iPod, Creative Zen, Sandisk, Zune? None of these play Ogg! They play WAV which is too big, MP3 which is small and sounds good, and some other format like WMA or M4A which are DRM tainted and proprietary to Microsoft and Apple respectively.
Now don't be stupid and assume that I am unaware of the few several manufacturers of Ogg capable players. I am well aware of them but, lets face it, Samsung and iRiver combined are tiny bit players in the Flash/MP3 Player market, Apple especially and more recently Microsoft are the dominant players. Please excuse the pun.
MP3 is the best/most playable option right now. Ogg may catch on but, it's a long way off and unless Fraunhofer starts suing individuals, it is unlikely that Ogg will ever take over the mainstream.
And don't even get me started on the whole negative connotation from the piss poor name aspect.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on December 21, 2006 06:05 AMI'll tell you why. It's because regardless of Fraunhofer; MP3 is the most playable format there is. Regardless of vague threats from Fraunhofer, MP3 can be played by any computer and most importantly it can be played by any portable music player. Does portable music player sound strange? Perhaps that is due to it being more commonly referred to as an MP3 Player!
Most people don;t care about formats. They care about content. They want to be able to play the audio file and if it is an Ogg file there is a 99% chance that they won't be able to play it.
With Ogg, they can't play it on their computer without installing additional software, read pain. With MP3 they already have the software on their system. all they have to do is click the file and it plays!
With Ogg, they can't play it on their MP3 Player. What are the top MP3 players, iPod, Creative Zen, Sandisk, Zune? None of these play Ogg! They play WAV which is too big, MP3 which is small and sounds good, and some other format like WMA or M4A which are DRM tainted and proprietary to Microsoft and Apple respectively.
Now don't be stupid and assume that I am unaware of the few several manufacturers of Ogg capable players. I am well aware of them but, lets face it, Samsung and iRiver combined are tiny bit players in the Flash/MP3 Player market, Apple especially and more recently Microsoft are the dominant players. Please excuse the pun.
MP3 is the best/most playable option right now. Ogg may catch on but, it's a long way off and unless Fraunhofer starts suing individuals, it is unlikely that Ogg will ever take over the mainstream.
And don't even get me started on the whole negative connotation from the piss poor name aspect.
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