Vorbis support in hardware players (was Re: dropping mp3 support in rh8)

[Geoff Shang]

Hi:

I haven't seen anything mentioned one way or the other about Phillips
products.  People have been at companies for some time about including
vorbis in portable players.  Now that Vorbis 1.0 is out, and particularly
now that Tremor has been released as free software, there seems to be some
interest from hardware manufacturers.

Many hardware players use fixed point processors (i.e. they don't do
floating point very well).  the reference vorbis decoder uses a lot of
floating point mathematics to do its job.  The xiph people have written a
fixed-point decoder code named Tremor which they decided to make opensource
about a month ago.  This means that all it will need for hardware
manufacturers to include vorbis support in their player is some time
porting and fine-tuning the code to work with their player.  No patent or
royalty fees for use of Vorbis, and no licensing fees for the decoder code.
And the xiph people are ready and willing to help with implementation.

So having said all that, get in touch with Phillips or any other hardware
manufacturer you want and tell them you want Vorbis support in their player
and, if relevant, you won't buy one until it has it.  Also pass on this URL
which you may also want to read:

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html

Geoff.


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Geoff Shang <gshang at uq.net.au>
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