On May 1, 2010, at 1:45 AM, ineiev <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi, Jeff!
Jeff wrote:
Yes, you are correct. All of these players 1) have their own
format, and 2) play multiple formats,
Thank you, it helps a lot; that is, it was probably something like
"RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, iTunes own formats,
and other popular formats require people to use non-free software:
controlled by companies, not by the users."
I'm sure it's something close to this.
however, I don't think any of them play open source formats
without hacking.
Not quite sure what "open source formats" are. propably it is not
the same as "formats decently supported by some open source
software,"
Correct again. Open source formats / file types means that the code
and codec needed is freely available for any software to use. The
software company does not need to pay any sort of fee to use ogg, an
open source music and video format.
since VLC officially declares full MP3 support,
and all those unethical things play that format, too.
(also, there is partial support of Real Audio and full support
of WMA 1/2 and WMA 3 in VLC.)
As of Ogg,
* Windows Media Player can play Ogg Vorbis
with a codec (www.vorbis.com/setup_windows/)
* RealPlayer has a plugin for Ogg Vorbis/Theora provided
by https://helixcommunity.org/projects/xiph/news/116
(very old news: 2004-06-18 13:45; it is likely that
the plugin is out-of-date)
* http://xiph.org/quicktime/ suggests there is a way to play
Ogg Vorbis with iTunes.
These "plug-ins" are developed and maintained by 3rd parties, not
maintained by the company itself. These software companies do not
offically offer a way to install plug-in, so that's why I called it
hacking.
iTunes can only play with the "plug in". If you want to rip CDs to
ogg, burn audio CDs from ogg, and listen to ogg on your iPod, some
other software is needed, separate from iTunes. My experience with
installing the plugin (year 2006 and 2009) was simple, place a file
inside a directory (create directory if it doesn't exist), restart
comp. Simple for a guy like me and most people, however, people
less confident in their computer skills will have a hard time doing
this and worry that if they mess up they'll ruin the computer.
Others see ogg as inferior if it is not supported by default, and
some just expect their mac to work without extra hassle.
Windows Media player, I believe is the same story, forget about
ripping CDs to ogg and burning ogg to audio cd. My experience here
is that the plugin is incomplete (well I tried it in 2006). Here's
what happened, I had to open WMP choose File, Open, and select the
ogg. One file at a time. If you set WMP as default player so you
can double click oggfiles, WMP gives you some error message, saying
ogg is an unsupported file type. This message can be cleared out by
changing something in the registry, however, this goes back to users
computing confidence level, and seriously, I believe most of us find
it unjustifiable touching the registry. I believe that can be made
automated in the installer package. Things may have changed since
2006, but I was unsuccessful at remotely helping others install this.
On the one hand, I can't check how seamless those plugins are,
on the other hand, I don't think searching for and
installing a plugin really counts as "hacking".
No, what I call hacking is the developers of these so called
plugins, getting around limitations of these sofware. And don't get
me wrong, in this case, hacking is a good thing. Are you familiar
with Winamp? Winamp truely has plugin feature, and also comes with
the full free version. The problem is that many people know and
prefer WMP, and because ogg is so scarce, they don't bother.
Actually, I've seen people more willing to do the work to find a
program to convert ogg to mp3.
It can be said that I almost never listen to any formats,
so I know little about these matters, but my first pass suggests
that the statement tends to oversimplify the situation.
Good questions you have. If I still leave you uncertain, please ask
more.