[Am-info] Windows Media Player on BBC - Comments requested

[Eric M. Hopper]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 07:51:36AM -0600, Eric M. Hopper wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 26, 2001 at 10:08:47PM -0800, Mitch Stone wrote:
> > >Feel free to send in comments about the BBC helping to support Microsoft 
> > >proprietary standards and effectively advertising Windows XP.
> > >
> > >Lets try and keep the Internet based on open standards without helping
> > >Microsoft carve out yet another monopoly.
> > 
> > What form of nonproprietary form of streaming media should we be 
> > suggesting as an alternative?
> 
> 	AFAIK, there aren't any good, Free streaming media formats.  Ogg
> Tarkin will be someday, but that won't be for another 2-3 years.  In the
> meantime, the streaming media vendor that is the most platform neutral
> is Real.  I don't like them though because they tend to be spyware.

	I should've been more specific.  Ogg Vorbis, the audio format,
is definitely ready for primetime.  I use it for everything I can right
now.  Ogg Tarkin is the video format, and it's in the planning stages
right now.

	Ogg, like QuickTime, and possibly other formats, is actually a
srot of wrapper around any sort of media data you want to encode.
Vorbis and Tarkin are the first audio and video formats respectively.
The guy who does Ogg is planning for all of the media types encoded by
Ogg to be Free.

Have fun (if at all possible),
-- 
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."  --- Thomas Jefferson
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."  -- Mark Twain
-- Eric Hopper (hopper@omnifarious.org  http://www.omnifarious.org/~hopper) --