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

[Eric M. Hopper]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 08:58:07AM -0800, Mitch Stone wrote:
> --- From a message sent by Eric M. Hopper on 12/27/01 5:51 AM ---
> 
> >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.
> 
> Real is about as proprietary as they come. Did you ever try to convert 
> RealAudio files to anything else? Quicktime is far more open then Real.
> 
> The BBC should be encouraged to provide streaming audio and video in 
> multiple formats.

	Apple flat out refuses to make Quicktime players for anything
but Windows and MacOS.  Also, the Sorenson codec, which is what's used
for most Quicktime things, is encumbered by quite a thorny thicket of
patents and NDAs.

	Real produces players for lots more platforms, and I think their
player has been reverse engineered.

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) --