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Music Media

BBC Reopens Ogg Streams 261

Posted by timothy from the let-the-goodness-flow dept.
garf writes: "Once again, back by popular demand, the BBC has opened up live streaming of Radio 4, to test with the new codecs, especially for modem users. Hop over here. And for those wishing to listen to Radio 1 try these (link one), (link two). But beware: '[Radio 1 streams] are available sporadically at the moment. Don't be surprised if it cuts off, as I've probably just killed it ready for restarting with different settings.' Please email support to the BBC for their continued support for the ogg format. Happy listening."
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BBC Reopens Ogg Streams More

BBC Reopens Ogg Streams

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  • NPR should do this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ekrout ( 139379 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @02:29AM (#2918211) Journal
    NPR should do this since they're kind of the "GNU/Linux" of the radio world. Instead, they only offer support for QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media streams.

    In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the growth and development of noncommercial radio) should definitely be supporting an open audio standard such as Ogg Vorbis.
    • I agree. To my ear(with my cable connection), Ogg seems to have the best streaming quality. None of the tinny sound Real and Wmp have. It would also be nice if it was the World Service online rather than 4.

      I would like some information of the costs involved. How effiecient is it, how cpu intensive. Streaming media on an enterprise level, requires powerful(expensive) hardware, and gobs of BW. If ogg is less cpu intensive and/or less of a BW pig than maybe it has a bright future.

    • Re:NPR should do this... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @03:10AM (#2918295)
      I understand what you mean. Broadcasting in QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media on the net is like broadcasting on the waves in a secret format that can only be decoded by one brand of radio receiver.

      But the "radio receiver" is given away for free? Well the "radio receiver" has strange buttons and features that some people can't stand, isn't compatible with your "car" (Operating System), could be tracking what you listen, etc. That doesn't make sense, does it? Well that's exactly what's happening right now with net radio.

      The ogg format, by being documented, is the equivalent of plain radio: everyone can build a receiver.
    • If consumer feedback got BBC to change... then consumer feedback would help get NPR and CBC (Radio Canada) and VoA and suchlike to change.

      Take the time to send an email to the public radio stations for Canada, Australia, USA, Germany, France, and so on. It'd be seriously *great* if they all used Ogg streaming media!
    • In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the growth and development of noncommercial radio)


      Having run a student radio station in my college days, I can tell you definitively that NPR doesn't give two shits about the "growth and development of noncommercial radio." They care about the growth and development of NPR franchises, nothing more. When the FCC proposed allowing low-power FM licenses to student and community run stations, NPR joined with the National Association of Broadcasters (Clear Channel + their associates) in spreading "It will ruin the spectrum" FUD to Congressmen to block its passage.

      Please don't kid yourself. NPR isn't interested in fair play or community voices, unless they get to decide which community voices get aired. They like being the "voice of reason" on the radio and do not want competition.
    • ...they were prominent (along with commercial stations) in getting the FCC to back down on its plans for community radio. Their behavior is more similar to Sun's licensing of Java than the FSF's licensing of GNU; they want non-commercial radio to be available, but they want it to be NPR.

      > In my opinion, National Public Radio (whose mission is to aid the
      > growth and development of noncommercial radio) should definitely be

      That indeed is the actual wording of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act. But NPR, both in the late seventies [radio4all.org] and late nineties [reclaimdemocracy.org], worked vigorously against just that.

      That said, they're pretty liberal on most other issues, and that would fit pretty well with the anticorporate overtones of free software.

  • Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Silver222 ( 452093 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @02:30AM (#2918213)
    The streams are available sporadically at the moment? And you decide to throw the Slashdot effect at them?


    That's like testing a car for highway safety with a hydrogen bomb, you know.

    • Re:Wait a minute... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TenPin22 ( 213106 )
      Valid point but it certainly makes a good stress test. This was posted on /. when they were testing Ogg a while back. The service was almost completely uninterupted and that was with higher bitrate streams as well as the low ones so I can only assume that they are easily able to cope.

      Oh wait, cope with the Slashdot effect. Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
    • Have faith in Auntie! (BBC nickname in the UK).

      She can handle a little Slashdot. The Beeb's (another nickname) website and server farm is huge. It's the biggest and most popular website in Europe. If the new streams fail it won't be due to lack of bandwidth.

      [This post was written in the knowledge that there's a good chance I'll be made to eat these words!]

    • Nothing like kicking a site when it's down.
  • and linking the streams to a slashdot story helps the streams stay up how? :)

    • Re:streams + slashdot = ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by biglig2 ( 89374 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @06:14AM (#2918566) Homepage Journal
      Well, since it's a test transmission to see if Ogg is popular, then slashdotting it sounds like a plan.

      BTW, for those not familiar with the BBC radio staions, R4 is speech and R1 is pop music for young people. That sounds dreadfully patronising, doesn't it? Perhaps I should explain, they have R1 for young people and R2 for people who aren't young, so that ancient 30-year olds like me can listen to pop without our heads hurting. Of course, there's a certain amount of Jazz and Big Band music in the R2 Schedules as well, but that can be fun too.

      It is a rite of passage in the UK when one grim day you wake up and don't like R1 anymore, and subsequently begin to mutter "dreadful noise, when I was a kid we had proper musicians like Duran Duran". Oh, except you can continue to listen to John Peel as long as you like.*

      R3 is classical, R5 is rolling news and sport.

      World Service is a mixture of new programming and "best of" to make one channel for world-wide broadcast. Consequentially it is a popular choice at home as well.

      *I thought that CowCube session last week was excellent; why has this guy got a hotmail account instead of a record contract?
      • R1 is pop music for young people

        Generally true, but as you mention, there is John Peel :-)

        For anyone not familiar with UK radio, I'd advise anyone wanting to hear great, refreshing, different, non-mainstream music to watch out for John Peel's show.

  • ogg vorbis support (Score:4, Informative)

    by merkac ( 553485 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @02:33AM (#2918220) Homepage Journal
    For all the latest on ogg vorbis check out vorbis homepage [vorbis.com]. For the more hardcore development stuff see xiphorous [xiph.org].

    Even lame [sulaco.org] supports ogg coding through libogg.

    merkac

  • cool (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bastard01 ( 532616 )
    I like the fact that large companies are taking to this standard for media, I have just started using linux much more and looked in my KDE to see that there was this ogg vorbis format, so I ripped a few of my cds with it, and am extremely happy with the result. I then did some research on it and found out that it was open, bonus.If someone can tell me of a portable player that can use this format, I will appreciate it! I would like a durable way to play my music without having to re-rip my songs.
  • I'm just wondering what they're testing the streaming codecs for, "especially for modem users". If you can control the bitrate, why would you need to test the usability on limited bandwidth? Common sense dictates that if bandwidth audio bitrate, it won't stream. I imagine it would be more useful to test the streaming servers rather than the codec itself.

  • naming conventions. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by prizzznecious ( 551920 ) <hwky AT freeshell DOT org> on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @02:36AM (#2918227) Homepage
    I seriously don't think .ogg files will ever be able to reach the ascendancy of .mp3 files. The reason is aesthetic- .mp3 sounds slick and space-age, whereas .ogg sounds like egg and/or the noise of vomiting. I do not like eggs or vomit, and I would put neither into my computer.

    This might seem like a minor quibble, but I would venture that it's the little things like this (design considerations) that distinguish popular products/formats from the scores of unpopular ones.
    • I see your point, and I have to agree.

      I think the word 'vorbis' sounds pretty cool though, and that is the name of the audio codec. Other multimedia codecs will be given other 'ogg xxxx' names. Check the OGG Homepage here [ogg.org]
    • I agree, it's a silly sounding name and probably raised the eyebrows of the boss of the BBC engineer that asked permission to stream it. Fortunately he had his boss well training, but I would certainly hesitate to recommend it to my boss for streaming. It sounds niche.

      I've asked before and I'll ask again: why not call it "mp5" and encourage people to 'upgrade'? After all, Thompsons got away with MP3 Pro.

      Phillip.
      • I agree, it's a silly sounding name and probably raised the eyebrows of the boss of the BBC engineer that asked permission to stream it. Fortunately he had his boss well training, but I would certainly hesitate to recommend it to my boss for streaming. It sounds niche.

        I've asked before and I'll ask again: why not call it "mp5" and encourage people to 'upgrade'? After all, Thompsons got away with MP3 Pro.

        I disagree, I think ogg vorbis sounds cool, in the same way volkswagen bug sounds cool. However, if you need to number your standards instead of name them, try "OV1". Sounds cool, right? It means 'ogg version 1'.
      • I've asked before and I'll ask again: why not call it "mp5" and encourage people to 'upgrade'? After all, Thompsons got away with MP3 Pro.


        Because a certain german firm would go ape about it. No, not Fraunhofer, *these guys* [heckler-koch.de]. I don't fancy upsetting them...
    • The reason is aesthetic- .mp3 sounds slick and space-age, whereas .ogg sounds like egg and/or the noise of vomiting.

      No, no, no. Mp3 only "sounds cool" to you because you have grown so used to hearing it being used in every day contexts. There is absolutely nothing in the name that would make it appealing to 'normal' people. [perhaps tech geeks are an exception here; they might think names like r2d2 and c3po are the best anyone could come up with?]. Mp3 is a boring TLA that no one would care about if the actual thing hadn't been working so well. It's popular despite its name, if you will.

      As to ogg being uncool, perhaps so, perhaps not. But the whole approach is not to market it like an iMac; it's (as I understand) being pushed (if that word can even be used) as an open standard, first for people with techical background. I for one prefer them spending time making format and tools solid instead of tinkering with ad campaigns and market research.

    • Vorbis, you say? Surely we can get something 'cool' out of that, let's rearrange a few letters....

      .VBS files they are then. The immediate upshot of this is that .VBS files will suddenly be the most popular format on the Internet, as after all everyone will be emailing them to each other.

      ;).
  • As a longtime audiophile and a fan of digital music and all things open source, I was quite excited when I read about Xiph's Ogg Vorbis project. I had high hopes for the new format; unencumbered by patents and restrictions, the Ogg team was working on a way to replace the tinny, empty sound of MP3 that had become so prevalent in most online song swapping venues. I looked forward to a new revolution, where I could listen to CD-quality sound from my computer and truly appreciate the depth of tone that had previously been belted out of my Harmon Kardon AVR 520.

    But alas, Ogg has disappointed me. Although it blows MP3, Real, and especially WMA out of the water on telephone-quality 56k streams, it produced nothing but unpleasantness for me when I attempted to use it to recreate the trebelish peaks and bassive lows of Rachmaninoff's work. In some ways, MP3 was almost easier to listen to, because I had become accustomed to its quirks.

    Thus, Ogg has found its niche: low bandwidth applications benefit enormously by the nearly lossless compression that it offers for low-speed streams. As for music distribution - so far there are no clear contenders, but hopefully someday a format will exist that does an acceptable job of re-creating music the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

    freebsd guy

    • Re:OGG's niche (Score:3, Interesting)

      by crandall ( 472654 )
      Perhaps on classical music it is worse, but I find that with heavy electronic music (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, etc), that OGG keeps the music much clearer than MP3. MP3 tends to mutilate hard core electronic music. OGG on the otherhand manages to produce better quality at a lower bitrate than MP3.

      For Aphex Twin, I tend to find that unless the MP3 is 256kb or greater, I can hear the MP3 warbling. With OGG, 192 is enough that I can't distinguish from CD anymore.

      Basically I've moved to OGG completely. I rip everything to OGG, and rarely use mp3s anymore. Since there is an official OGG plugin for winamp (Download Here [winamp.com]), it's easy to just use OGG instead.
    • You're kidding right? Either that is one whopper of a troll, or you are a wannabe audiophile. *REAL* audiophiles would NEVER use those phrases.

      That, and the compositions of Rachmoninoff aren't exactly sonically varied.

      If you had put Schoenberg, Mahler or Shostakovich you would have had a little credibility. But Rachmoninoff?

      If you are serious, go back and do an actual double blind test (something even real audiophiles have problems doing), then say you can 1) tell the difference between 256k mp3 and 256k ogg AND 2) conclusively say that ogg is worse.

      Others who HAVE done this have reached completely different conclusions.
      • Um, I'm not sure what you mean by "sonically varied," but if having long periods of quiet followed by loud crescendoes counts, Rach is definitely in.



        I think you're letting your biases show here. Just because you like (insert composer here) doesn't mean his music is more difficult to compress than Rachmaninoff's. You sound more like a wannabe "audiophile" than anything else. Putting down people for expressing their opinions about how ogg sounds, while including your own highly subjective judgments about what composers are good, does not help your case.



        I think the idea of doing a double-blind test is great. But it should also measure performance at 128 kbit/s as well as at higher rates. And until you can put some substance behind your pretentious claims, please refrain from posting.

    • The same is true for all of these encoders.

      The fact is, AIFF is absolutely great for digital audio. 24bit, 96khz, overkill.

      None of these formats are designed to do anything more than provide acceptable quality over low bandwidth connections.

      In circumstances where bandwidth is not a concern, there are far better encoding methods than MP3, Ogg, WMA, etc.

      Don't get too stuck on the concept of encoding - it's just a means of overcoming a lack of bandwidth, not an attempt at providing superlative audio quality, though that could be considered a secondary concern in the design.

      As long as the audio quality is decent, and the filesizes are low, then the encoder is doing the job it was designed to do ... anything above that is a bonus.

    • Shorten (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't think ogg was ever intended to be a perfect codec but one that would be substantially better than mp3, and able to compete with wma, ra and qt for streaming market share. To these ends ogg has performed pretty well so far.

      You didn't mention which version you tested with. The recently released RC3 (jan 1 2002) is improved over RC2 in the treble area, so if you encoded with RC2, give RC3 a try.

      If you want a lossless compression format for audio, check out shorten [softsound.com]. It's not as drastic as mp3 or ogg, of course, but it does cut file size in about half.

      Btw, the 'way it was meant to be enjoyed' format for Rachmaninov is live performance, not CD, mp3 or ogg.

      _KhlER3L

  • Big support for the boys at Vorbis (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p24t ( 312611 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @02:38AM (#2918233)
    I'm glad to see this... MP3's have received so much attention, none of the other codecs haven't been in the news much. Sure, there's the random article comparing 4 or 5 codecs that no one's ever going to use, or the little articles saying that people hear an improvement in Ogg [vorbis.com] over MP3. But have you seen people using .ogg's? I do. Everything I've ripped is now in Ogg. Better quality, more flexibility, and a superior acoustic model.

    I thought listening to the BBC over Ogg was cool. I remembered the first time I'd heard it over shortwave. Not to mention that it worked flawlessly. Then again, I'lve always got the latest plugin for my Winamp [blorp.com], and my XMMS [xmms.org]. No annoying RealPlayer crap. No proprietary codecs. It works on my non-Windows boxes.

    I sent a brief, yet eloquent note to the BBC webmaster when the original test completion was finished, and will probably send another encouraging this continued project. I would encourage the same from others.

    Support your local hackers. (no, not crackers. hackers. Damn Hollywood crap.)
  • I've been making mp3 files for a long time, and with the help of r3mix [r3mix.net] I feel comfortable knowing the right options to feed lame to produce high quailty mp3 files. This has evolved into simply passing "--r3mix" to lame.

    Now I'm thinking about giving ogg a spin but I feel like I'm back where I was when I started making mp3 files.

    What encoder to use? What options to use?

    Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!

    • Re:Guide for making .ogg files? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      #! /bin/bash
      # CD Ripper Script
      # save tracks in /mnt/music/ogg/style/artist/album/track.ogg

      # Info
      s=rock # style
      n=11 # number of tracks
      a=pink_floyd # artist
      l=the_division_bell # album
      d=1994 # date
      t1=cluster_one.ogg
      t2=what_do_you_want_from_me.ogg
      t3=poles_apart.ogg
      t4=marooned.ogg
      t5=a_great_day_for_freedom.ogg
      t6=wearing_the_inside_out.ogg
      t7=take_it_back.ogg
      t8=coming_back_to_life.ogg
      t9=keep_talking.ogg
      t10=lost_for_words.ogg
      t11=high_hopes.ogg

      # Directory management
      music=/mnt/music/ogg
      mkdir $music
      cd $music
      mkdir $s
      cd $s
      mkdir $a
      cd $a
      mkdir $l
      cd $l

      # CD Paranoia needs to search exhaustively for the SCSI-ATAPI CD-ROM, so use the -s switch
      # Use -B (batch) mode to save each track in its own file
      cdparanoia -s -B -- "1-$n"

      # Compress with Ogg Vorbis

      # This yields a compression ration of about 12 and sounds great when played with xmms
      oggenc -o $t1 -a $a -l $l -d $d track01.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t2 -a $a -l $l -d $d track02.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t3 -a $a -l $l -d $d track03.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t4 -a $a -l $l -d $d track04.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t5 -a $a -l $l -d $d track05.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t6 -a $a -l $l -d $d track06.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t7 -a $a -l $l -d $d track07.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t8 -a $a -l $l -d $d track08.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t9 -a $a -l $l -d $d track09.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t10 -a $a -l $l -d $d track10.cdda.wav
      oggenc -o $t11 -a $a -l $l -d $d track11.cdda.wav

      # Cleanup
      rm *.wav
    • oggenc? - Have a look at www.vorbis.com they have all the info you need for ripping, playing, encoding etc. into and out of the ogg format.
    • What encoder to use?

      Unlike with MP3, at the moment there is only one reference implementation of a Vorbis encoder. There are quite a few frontends, though. If you are in Windows, your best bet at the moment is to use the incredible but slightly clunky EAC [exactaudiocopy.de], with the command line oggenc encoder available from the main site [vorbis.com]. The main alternative is CDex [n3.net], but at the moment it only supports RC2 (not RC3). If you are in Linux, then you can use any ripping program you like as long as you use oggenc as the encoder.

      What options to use?

      You are using LAME --r3mix at the moment, so give '-q 5' a go (with RC3 on, specify a *quality* level rather than a *bitrate*). Quality 5 (out of 10) is nominally 160kpbs, and should be comparable or better than --r3mix in quality.

      For more information and discussion, check out the Hydrogen Audio (Project Mayhem) [hydrogenaudio.org] forum. Many of the developers of various audio formats hang out there, as well as people organising listening tests.

    • Use the encoder that's in vorbistools, called oggenc. For a GUI front-end to a cdparanoia+oggenc combo, try grip.

  • Just Excellent (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TenPin22 ( 213106 )
    The previous ogg streaming by the BBC was excellent to say the least. 128Kbit Ogg gives stunning Quality for music and way more than you need for voice.

    Unfortunately they are only doing Radio 1 at 64Kbit at the moment which is alot crisper than 64Kbit Mp3 but seems to mess up the treble more.

    What is excellent is that you can save the stream to disk which must be the easiest way ever to record your favorite program.

    The links for Radio 1 on the /. post work but they are not currently listed on the BBC page.

    The low bandwidth option runs at vbr around 50Kbit which means you will have to have a very good modem connection for it to work.

    Please mail the BBC support [mailto] about this as I really hate wma and real audio, plus they are inferiour and proprietry.

  • More links (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @03:02AM (#2918281)
    BBC's streaming Vorbis schedule & info [bbc.co.uk]

    Primary ogg-related feedback address: oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk [mailto]

    The BBC itself has a pretty extensive feedback gathering mechanism: here are online feedback forms you can fill out:

    Feedback form about the BBC website/services [bbc.co.uk]

    Feedback form about BBC Radio [bbcresources.co.uk]

    BBC News suggestions form [bbc.co.uk]

    But remember: you can gush all you want about the BBC's OGG decision--but I have a feeling the BBC is more interested in how many people are actually tuning in. The best way to get this to stay up is to really listen... and it's worth doing, especially if you're in the US and want 15% less state propaganda in your news. I don't just mean now, as long as this story is on the /. homepage, but next week, too...

    • Midly offtopic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Marcus Brody ( 320463 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @08:29AM (#2918791) Homepage
      Please excuse the slight change of topic - there has been a bit of wierdness on /. about off-topicness recently so i am a little worried about posting this. However, it is still pertinent to the conversation.

      if you're in the US and want 15% less state propaganda in your news.

      This is an interesting comment about the British Broadcasting Corporation (a not for profit organisation funded by the british taxpayer). Its primary role is to provide non-biased News, Education and original entertainment to the british populace both home and abroad (through the fantastically cool world service). However, the bbc website throws this role wide open. Plenty of non-british (particularly ossies and usians) now use the website. And they use it for good reasons - its (relatively) non-biased, apoliticol and non-commercial nature. However, these people pay nothing towards the upkeep of the site, unlike british taxpayers like myself.

      So, what is the role of the bbc website in a global market? Should they seek avenues for revenue from non-british peoples?

      As this thread shows, they seem to be quite good at pushing new technologies and investing/experimenting with the internet (furthermore, news.bbc.co.uk is apache on linux, which is nice ;-). Which is a good thing, and seems to be sticking to the original remit of the bbc. They also seem to be doing a good job of raising the british profile abroad, which in an economic sense is a good thing.

      But i cant help feeling a little bitter. Do any other rich countries have any non-commercial websites, up to the standard of the bbc? What I really, really want to do is get my revenge by leeching some taxpayers money back from America or Australia ;-)
      • "What I really, really want to do is get my revenge by leeching some taxpayers money back from America or Australia."

        Still bitter about the weakening of the Empire, huh? ;)
      • BBC is the propaganda arm of the London government, and as such, its wide availability does a big service to the UK. As a Brit you should rejoice that all of Africa and many other places in the world swear by the BBC. I think it's the most popular station in Afghanistan, and has been even under the Taliban, who couldn't jam it because Taliban soliders would revolt if they couldn't listen to BBC soap operas. I'm not kidding! What this sort of penetration means is that the world tends to see things your way even before you send in the tanks and bombers. It's also much cheaper.

        As an American, one thing I like about the BBC is that it doesn't lay on the propaganda quite as thick as domestic media sources.

        As far as other state-run content sources, the NPR homepage has a lot of stuff. In some ways it's better than the BBC, because all of their major programs are saved as .rm files and you can play them back in pieces any time. (If only they'd be OGG files...) The CBC has a similar deal--a bit smaller, but the content is a bit better. For news, I'm also a fan of the Deutsche Welle and the Tagesshau. I find the German world news to be a bit more objective than the BBC. I know there is also a French equivanlent, but my French is very bad. In the last few months I also really wished I spoke Arabic, because the Al Jazeera [aljazeera.net] site seems to have a lot of content. Hey, if Americans feel they need to bomb it, it's got to be good! (Though I guess Al Jazeera isn't state-run.) Anyway, there are a lot of news sources online. If you sift through a wide range of them, you can sort of zero in on the truth. The BBC is a good site, thought I think their news coverage is often pretty shallow.

  • you just know that every Tom, Dick and AC are going to try this service. this being just reopened I wouldn't think BBC have the required iron in place to handle the slashdot effect (very few have). at the end of the day, BBC will think this is a bad idea as it just keep crashing their servers. just my .02 euro.

    • Re:is this really a good idea? (Score:4, Funny)

      by omega9 ( 138280 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @03:46AM (#2918343)
      Trolling? Karma Whoring? Whatever it is, it seems you've spent to much energy trying to be creative and not enough realy thinking this through.

      Chapter 1: "Tom, Dick and AC"
      Why is this an interesting story? Because a lot of us are interested, and would like others to be interested in the .ogg format. So what better way to introduce .ogg to a wider audience then to have BBC radio stream in .ogg format? So in a major way it is hoped that every "Tom, Dick and AC" jumps on this.

      Chapter 2: "handle the slashdot effect (very few have)"
      As most of us know, this isn't the first time BBC radio has implemented a streaming radio service, more specifically not the first time on this project. They're aware that people are interested and I'm sure they're planning accordingly. If they're truly serious about this then I'm sure they've made provisions to scale hardware according to demand.

      Chapter 3: "at the end of the day, BBC will think this is a bad idea"
      When any service is initially introduced, you'll usually see disproportionately low or high traffic. Either way, the time immediately following the introduction is absolutely not when to judge your average traffic. This actually holds tru for many IT services. Anyone in the industry knows this, and I'm sure the BBC do as well.I'll assume this is not your line of work.

      Chapter 4: "just my .02 euro"
      While this could be considered creative, you've missed the mark. The BBC is a product of the United Kingdom. Denmark, Sweden and the United Kingdom are members of the European Union but are not currently participating in the single currency. Denmark, though, is a member of the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II), which means that the Danish krone is linked to the euro, although the exchange rate is not fixed.
  • I have never heard BBC radio, so forgive my ignorance.
    What are Radio 1, and Radio 4? What is the difference? What about Radio 2, 3, 5... ?

    • Re:Radio 1 vs Radio 4 (Score:3, Informative)

      by PoshSpod ( 549405 )
      Radio 1 = Music (mostly pop and rock but with special programmes for different kinds)

      Radio 2 = Easy Listening music + speak

      Radio 3 = Classical

      Radio 4 = Speak (mostly high-brow stuff)

      Radio 5 (live) = News and Sport coverage with phone-ins etc. Not as high brow as R4.

      • Re:Radio 1 vs Radio 4 (Score:4, Informative)

        by Yaruar ( 125933 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @05:49AM (#2918509)
        Radio 4 also has a lot of varied content.

        I think it is worth pointing out that they have some of the best origonal content in radio.

        If you like comedy there is grounbreaking stuff there as well as old favourites.

        Most of the best comedy coming out of the UK in the past 10-15 years has had it's roots in radio 4.

        As for Radio 1 I would reccomend anyone into music checks out John Peel, one of the longest running DJ's in teh world an the man who has broken almost every major genre in the last 30 odd years.

        There's pretty much music for everyone there, best to check out evenings and early mornings (GMT) as they put their more challenging programmes on, but tehy do have top class DJ's on these shows.

        As for handling the load. The BBC is better placed than many to deal with it. I don't know teh stats these days but at one point they were the largest web presence in europe and second in the world only to M$

        Anyway, good on Auntie Beeb, that's what I say ;-)
      • As a side note, I've been listening to Radio 1 at work for a few weeks now, and I'm completely hooked. It's so much better than Top 40 radio in the States, it's barely a valid comparison. The music is just more interesting and varied - the Top 40 station in my area at some point turned into the Ja Rule/Jay-Z station, which is just about completely devoid of music and creativity. With rare exceptions.

        Give Radio 1 a try if you've been annoyed at your US Top 40 station lately. However, the Brit DJs are just as dumb as the American ones. Guess that breed is the same the world over.

    • Re:Radio 1 vs Radio 4 (Score:2, Informative)

      by mlk ( 18543 )
      From http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/

      Radio 1 The best new music (main stream crap music)
      Radio 2 The nation's favourite (Crappy music, talk shows)
      Radio 3 Live music and arts (Jazz and other 'wierd' music, talk shows)
      Radio 4 Intelligent speech (LOTR Radio Play and the like, talk shows)
      Radio 5 Live news - live sport
      Radio Worldwide: News in 43 languages

      Mlk

    • Re:Radio 1 vs Radio 4 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Malc ( 1751 )
      R1-4 are national radio stations. Unlike NPR which consists of a lot of locally broadcast content (from what I recall I experienced when I lived in the US), BBC radio is the same everywhere, with a little local content. I was in the highlands of Scotland last summer, and all heard on R1 was continuous coverage of the lead up to the England-Germany world cup qualification match... hardly a word about Scotland-Croatia. The cool thing about national broadcasting is when you're driving around: as you go out of range of the transmitter, most modern car radios re-tune themselves to the new frequency and you don't get any interruptions!

      R4 is probably the closest to NPR, from the perspective a British person in the UK. The World Service would probably be closer for an American listening in from overseas. As a British ex-pat, I like to listen to the World Service. The quality is generally very good with no advertising, nor any annoying fund-raising drives.

      I've made a big assumption that you're American. Apologies if you're not. It might make sense to many other N.American readers though.

    • It's simple really. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @07:03AM (#2918666)
      Multiply the radio number by 20 and that's the oldest age that you should be listening to that station.

      Radio 1: up to 20 years old
      Radio 2: up to 40 years old
      Radio 3: up to 60 years old
      Radio 4: up to 80 years old
      Radio 5: Well, does anyone actually listen to radio 5?

  • Way to go! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @03:34AM (#2918327) Homepage Journal
    Honestly speaking commercial streaming providers are suffering from outragous fee charged for using proprietary codecs. My friend was surprise when RA charged them per *access*. Talking about *free* educational streaming-media website for charity...

    Proprietary codec hurts the widespread of multi-media information exchange. WWW would not be the same if it started out as pay-per-acess. I can foresee free codec format could make a revolution, now we only need some big corps create the market drive.

    *Hat off to BBC*
  • Reading the Webpage [bbc.co.uk] implies to me that this is one guy at the BBC being allowed to try this out for a limited period:
    "Update (2002-01-21): Ok, slight bogon."
    doesn't sound like the corporate face of the BBC talking!

    So it could be that this will only get taken up properly by the BBC if they get positive feedback - they've got a mailing address [mailto] just for this ...
  • How could I make recordings of programs broadcast on these streams?

    • Re:HowTo record? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by x3ja ( 225447 )
      If you listen to the stream in XMMS, you can set option "Save to Disk" in the options for the Ogg Vorbis input plugin.

  • RC3 needed (Score:5, Informative)

    by mindriot ( 96208 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @04:23AM (#2918401)

    Note that you need the latest Ogg release (RC3, download here [vorbis.com]) to play the streams; older versions didn't work for me. They seem to be using some features of Vorbis not available previously (e.g., the web page [bbc.co.uk] says, "I've decided to drop Radio 4 to a 32kHz samplerate and use the RC3 'quality' settings instead of enforcing an upper bitrate").

    With RC3, things are working beautifully. Good to see such support for an open, free standard.

    • Re:RC3 needed (Score:3, Informative)

      by six809 ( 1961 )

      Actually, any decoder after beta4 (ie, RC1 up) should work. The new features are in the encoder - the decoder has been functionally complete for some time.

  • I saw the reference to Freeamp on http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/, so I thought I would give it shot. I downloaded the latest version, and all it does is croak. IE has no problem opening the stream, but when Freeamp tries to, it comes back with: "The stream is not available. Source Not Found". Then I have to kill it in taskmgr as it won't do anything else.

    Can anybody else get it working, or recommend a better product? Perhaps even something that integrates properly with IE so that when I click on the web page I get music instead of a save dialog.

    This is my first attempt with OGG, and so far it hasn't been promising. I'm tired and I'm sure I'll have more energy in the morning ;) But, it doesn't bode well for mass acceptance if it takes more than a miniscule amount of effort to make it work.
    • Can anybody else get it working...?

      MediaXW [sf.net] is doing the trick for me. Adds the required mime-type handling, so clicking in your browser opens up media player and starts to play the stream.

      it doesn't bode well for mass acceptance if it takes more than a miniscule amount of effort to make it work.

      With this, it's no more effort than, say, Quicktime. Download the player/plugin - install it, the end.

      Cheers,
      Ian

    • Re:Freeamp under Windows? (Score:2, Informative)

      by six809 ( 1961 )

      I've installed FreeAmp twice now on Windows systems (I try to avoid them), but it's worked alright on both. It sometimes crashes, or just plain disappears, leaving a process hanging around, but for the most part it plays.

      If you want a not-completely-free player, the plugin for WinAmp is also directly linked off that page.

  • Cost (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 0123456789 ( 467085 )
    Kudos to the BBC for being innovative and trying something new. As a Scot living in England, I listen to the webcast of BBC Radio Scotland quite a bit (mainly for the football commentaries). However, slightly off-topic, what's with the BBCs funding model? We pay about 100 pounds per household for a TV license, which funds BBC Radio and Televison. No complaints about that, we get some good telly programs, without any irritating commercials. But why is the license fee paying for the website (and satellite and digital telly channels)? Surely they should carry adverts on the website to at least partly defray the cost of the on-line content?

  • Send comments to oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk (Score:5, Informative)

    by fire-eyes ( 522894 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @05:20AM (#2918465) Homepage
    I encourage others to give the BBC positive comments, and encourage them to continue the testing, and beyond.

    Send them to oggfeedback@bbc.co.uk

    Here is what I sent:

    Subject: Thank You! Keep it up!

    Thank you for testing your streaming with ogg. Myself and hundreds of thousands of unix and unix-like operating system users around the world truly appreciate this.

    It's often hard to have faith in large media companies. The BBC has always been the exception in my mind, and here it's shown again.

    This is especially useful being in the USA, as it is very difficult to get your radio programming. I'll surely be listening using ogg frequently.

    I hope the testing goes well, and ogg streaming becomes a future daily stream.

    Good Day

    Yes I know its not just unix / unix-like operating systems.

  • Uphill battle for Ogg (remember VQF?) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Oink.NET ( 551861 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @05:27AM (#2918473) Homepage
    When MP3s really started taking off, I got hooked on what I thought was "the next big thing", the technically superior VQF file format. I encoded a large portion of my music collection to VQF. With a significantly smaller filesize than MP3, yet with better quality, how could I go wrong?

    The answer of course is probably obvious; technically superior technology doesn't guarantee success. VHS vs. Betamax. QWERTY vs. Dvorak. Windows vs. Macintosh. By the time VQF came on the scene, MP3 was firmly entrenched in internet culture. VQF never had a chance.

    Here's an interesting, naive snippet from the VQF FAQ [vqf.com]: While you can find thousands and thousands of MP3s out there, the number of VQFs is comparatively tiny. But this is only a matter of time. Once people begin to realize how incredible these are, their popularity will skyrocket. VQF.com says "Copyright 2000" at the bottom. They've had a year or two to skyrocket. Raise your hands; how many of you have even one VQF on your hard drive?

    Now, listen to how familiar this [ogg-vorbis.com] sounds: Though not as popular as an MP3 file yet, Ogg Vorbis will eventually replace the MP3 format by popular demand, and like cassettes and 8 tracks, MP3's will be a thing of the past. This will happen because the Ogg Vorbis file format is a smaller file size, has a higher quality of sound clarity, and is FREE.

    I'd like to believe in Ogg, but I've been burned one too many times.

    • Re:Uphill battle for Ogg (remember VQF?) (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd like to believe in Ogg, but I've been burned one too many times.

      You're not going to get burned. The Vorbis source code will always be available, so you'll always be able to play the files (unlike VHS recorders for example, which can't play Beta tapes). The same goes for MP3. When an open audio format is deprecated, old files don't become unplayable, and when a new format becomes popular, you don't have to re-encode (or re-purchase) your entire music collection (people are always making comments like "I don't want to re-encode my 600 albums, so I can't start using Ogg").

      As long as you choose a format with an open-source player or codec available, you'll be fine. Just choose whichever one sounds best at the time when you're encoding. The problem with VQF is that it's a closed format. Not all players have plugins available, and the authors of a player couldn't add support even if they wanted to. Cross-platform support is also a problem, but realistically that wouldn't stop a good format from taking off.

    • Maybe because everything that had to do with VQF, but the soundquality, sucked?
      Proprietary, only support for Windows, crappy encoder, etc etc... ;-P

      The major thing holding back OGG/Vorbis right now is that WinAmp doesn't support it by default, but that will change with WinAmp v3...

      Since everybody is free to put OGG/Vorbis support, both decoding and encoding, in his/her/its application without paying stupid licensefees we have already begun to see OGG/Vorbis support in almost all soundapplications! (at least in the TODO-lists)

      This is the major reason that OGG will succeed where VQF didn't!

  • Funding the BBC (Score:2, Insightful)

    by not_cub ( 133206 )
    Great, a chance to make some Britain-centric comments on slashdot for once.
    The BBC is funded by every household in the UK that owns a TV paying approx 100UKP/year for a TV licence. This licence is required to watch *any* TV, or even to own one, I think. The money goes straight to the BBC. None of it goes to ITV, Channel 4, or any of the channels available on satelite, cable or digital terrestrial.
    What do we get for our 100UKP? Well, on the upside, we get quality programming, that I am assured by a BBC advert, is the envy of the world. Not really. What we actually get is 2 channels of mediocre TV. Most of the shows I watch on BBC are American imports, and about two years late at that. 2 channels for 100UKP/year also seems kind of expensive, even for rip-off Britain, considering Sky (the satelite TV company), offers 30 or 40 channels IIRC for that money.
    That's not all though. The money splays out sideways, to cover BBC radio, which covers 50% of the FM band, while commercial self-supporting AM stations such as Virgin have been unable to get FM space for 10 years.
    We get BBC news 24. it's own progenitor described it as "the news service nobody wanted". It's not quite as good as CNN for news, or Bloomberg for business.
    And we get the Perfect Day advert from a few years back. The BBC spent a huge wad of cash recording various artists singing one sentence each of Perfect Day, and then paid to have this played in Cinemas. An advert for a non-commercial service that you have to buy anyway. AMAZING!
    Realistically, the BBC's time has come. 50 years ago, it was reasonable to stimulate growth in TV (and fitted in nicely with the more socialist Britain). Now, there are plenty of commercial services that do the same job better, and cheaper. Australia abolished its TV licence many years ago, and America never had one. I think it's about time we join the late-20th century and abolish ours.

    Hmm, that came out longer than expected.
    not_cub

    • Re:Funding the BBC (Score:3, Insightful)

      by perky ( 106880 )
      I am afraid that I have to disagree with you. I think that whilst the BBC sometimes looses the plot, most of its output is of extremely high quality. I am perfectly happy to pay my share of the licence in my house for the privilige of ad free quality TV,the best news site on the web, and the Genius that is radio 4. In fact when the football's on telly we normally turn the volume down and listen to the commentry on 5 live.


      Having watched TV in the states and on the continent I wholeheartedly endorse the BBC. I don't watch a great deal of TV, so quality rather than quantity is what I want. And Quality is certainly more in evidence in the UK than anywhere alse in the world that I have visited.


      Frankly the greatest argument in favour of the current BBC is the US Television market.

    • Cheap at 10x the price.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joss ( 1346 ) on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @08:27AM (#2918785) Homepage
      I think you underestimate the importance of a lack of adverts. The BBC show no adverts. The average American watches 44000 pieces of carefully crafted pieces of corporate propoganda every year, each 30 seconds long. These encourage them to eat more fast food, drive more, consume more, go into debt, and vote for the politicians who are most friendly to corporate interests (the candidate with the most corporate sponsorship can afford the most adverts).

      If you watch US television for long, you will start to understand the obesity levels. Sandwitched between 10 minutes worth inane rubbish featuring potentially beautiful but dangerously starved people, you be subjected to 5 minutes of carefully crafted inviting you to go further into debt, then pig out on sugered drinks and ultra high fat junk.

      Paying a paltry £100 a year to make a dent in the level of brainwashing we are subjected to is peanuts. The cost is justified by the decreased load on the NHS alone.

      Of course, a better solution is to avoid TV altogether. If you must watch TV, at least buy a mirror to put up above the screen. That way you can look up from time to time and compare the excitement on the screen with the futile existence of the vegtable on the couch.

      Why would anyone want to go outside, meet people or do things ? Instead, you can watch others have fake adventures or get your opinions and desires programmed in rather than going to all the trouble of figuring them out for yourself. You can achieve a state of lower consciousness - it helps pass the time while you wait for death.

      For those too weak to avoid TV altogether (like me), advert free TV is the low-fat/filter-tipped option.
      • I think you underestimate the importance of a lack of adverts. The BBC show no adverts.
        I think you underestimate the importance of choice. If you like your no-advert TV service so much, then you can pay market price for it. For me, I am quite happy to pay the same money to Sky or a cable company to receive recent episodes of The Simpsons and Enterprise. The current status quo requires me to pay for the BBC as well. I would quite happily forgo all BBC services in exchange for the money I spend on them, but I do not have that option. To see the absurdity, imagine the reversed situation: In order to receive the BBC channels legally, you had to pay Sky 8 pounds a month. I do not have a problem with the existence of the BBC, I have a problem with their legislated tax on TV owners.

        To the AC who called them a uniquely successful company: I would hate to see what a company would have to do not to be a success with 10 million households sending then 100 quid a year (that's one billion pounds).

        not_cub

        • Err... 26 million households @ £109 a year.
        • > I think you underestimate the importance of choice. If you like your no-advert TV service so much, then you can pay market price for it.

          Ah - *choice*, the favorite word of capitalist idealism. Actually, I *do* buy the argument that one can never do anybody harm by increasing the number of choices available to them (unless they are stupid, but that's their problem). This is why I favor legalisation of all drugs. But, it is not so crystal when one person's choice adversely effects others.

          One valid argument against legalised heroin is that sometimes people's choices harm others. For instance, if I end up having to foot the medical bills of heroin users, then it *is* my business what other people do in the privacy of their own homes. So, along with legal drugs I would also support education to warn people of dangers.
          It would seem a bit off to me if far more effort went into trying to persuade people to take heroin than was being spent telling them it might not be such a good idea. I don't believe in stopping people from doing stupid things, but I do have a problem with relentless propoganda telling them that stupid things are a good idea.

          The existence of adverts on your precious Sky effects me adversely even if I don't watch it. For instance, the advertising for PizzaHut leads to increased obesity, the additional burden on the NHS increases my taxes. I would be willing to pay money to educate people about dangers of eating high-sugar high-fat diets because education is cheaper than cure. By the same token, I would be prepared to pay extra not just to avoid adverts myself, but to avoid your exposure to adverts.

          In general advertising leads to increased consumerism: more roads, driving, shops, stress and pollution. In fact, it leads to what is hilariously called "progress". The direction it leads people in has only got the faintest association with this idea of "choice". The only "choices" proposed in adverts are ones which will make the advertiser richer.

          The desires of humanity are being manipulated and shaped by those with a short term money making agenda. If you want a purely capitalist solution, you need to somehow calculate the true costs of advertising. So, by all means: persuade people to buy that new BMW, that is perfectly fair - just make sure that the full cost of the extra pollution, congestion, noise, road accidents, etc is paid by the advertiser.

    • The BBC is funded by every household in the UK that owns a TV paying approx 100UKP/year for a TV licence. This licence is required to watch *any* TV, or even to own one, I think. The money goes straight to the BBC. None of it goes to ITV, Channel 4, or any of the channels available on satelite, cable or digital terrestrial.

      Lets see. I moved to Canada from the UK. I pay Can$35 a month to watch telly through my cable provider - thats about UKP180/year. And what do I actually watch? Reruns of British shows mostly, plus the occassional gem like 'Nero Wolfe'. So for that extra 80quid I'm spending I get to watch LESS decent TV. The rest is bunk - there are only so many times I can watch the Buffy reruns (on six channels simultaneously...)

      What do we get for our 100UKP? Well, on the upside, we get quality programming, that I am assured by a BBC advert, is the envy of the world.

      Guess you haven't lived abroad then. The number of decent productions outside the A&E/BBC productions is pretty small

      Not really. What we actually get is 2 channels of mediocre TV. Most of the shows I watch on BBC are American imports, and about two years late at that.

      Well I pity you then...

      2 channels for 100UKP/year also seems kind of expensive, even for rip-off Britain, considering Sky (the satelite TV company), offers 30 or 40 channels IIRC for that money.

      Trust me - even 70+channels of rubbish is still rubbish.

      That's not all though. The money splays out sideways, to cover BBC radio, which covers 50% of the FM band, while commercial self-supporting AM stations such as Virgin have been unable to get FM space for 10 years.

      So you are complaining that that 100UKP also covers something like 6 national radio stations plus about 50+ local stations, all free of advertising...

      We get BBC news 24. it's own progenitor described it as "the news service nobody wanted". It's not quite as good as CNN for news, or Bloomberg for business.

      You prefer Chicken Noodle News? Did you find that last lobotomy was good value? CNN has lost the plot bigtime - it fails to find any depth or balance these days and replays the exploding World Trade Towers at the smallest excuse. There is no serious debate on CNN anymore - any kudos they got from having reporters inside Iraq during the Gulf war is long gone...

      Now, there are plenty of commercial services that do the same job better, and cheaper. Australia abolished its TV licence many years ago, and America never had one. I think it's about time we join the late-20th century and abolish ours.

      If the BBC disappeared, the quality of broadcasting in the UK would quickly look like it does elsewhere - lowest common denominator productions aimed at maximal viewers for minimal cost. Expect massively overrun reruns of cheap programming, budget chat shows, game shows and agro-shows filling up the airwaves. Radio 4 would cease to exist and nothing would replace it - for a commercial radio station relying on ads, there isn't the market. Any in-depth scientific programs would die a death - they are expensive to produce and research. Historical programs would also feel the breath of marketing and fade away.

      To be honest, I'd be quite happy to pay UKP40-50/year to access premium web services on the BBC website. It seems you don't realise what value you are getting.

      Cheers,

      Toby Haynes

    • I can't agree with your statement that there are plenty of commercial services that do the same job better, and cheaper. This is just your personal opinion. My personal opinion is that there are NO commercial services that do the same job better.

      Two channels with several hours a week of watchable TV is much preferable to 40 channels of unwatchable crap.

      PS: The Perfect Day advert was a little curious - did the BBC realise it's actually about heroin addition ?

  • let the truth be told (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ironhide ( 803 )
    although i am a gpl enthousiast i am also a coompression enthousiast. In that respect realaudio and wma DEFINATELY outperform ogg in ultra low bandwidth circumstances for me (0-64kbps) in their latest incarnations. You cannot honestly say OGG blows them out of the water at those bitrates. A choice between quality and principle for me. What would you choose?
    • Anything else. Why? Every wma player for the mac sucked. What the hell does a music player, a simple one, need 32 megs of ram for? And it barely worked. Gimme mp3 at least.

  • Law of Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)

    by Skuto ( 171945 )
    The number of people complaining about Ogg having quality problems on Slashdot (without clips or objective blind testing) is inversely proportional to the number of people actually posting clips/blind test results to the Ogg Vorbis mailinglists.

    We can't fix problems that don't exist.

    --
    GCP

  • Thanks for the interest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jonathan Perkin ( 554901 ) <jonathan@perk i n . o r g . uk> on Tuesday January 29, 2002 @07:42AM (#2918710) Homepage
    Thank you for the interest that the majority of you have shown in these trials. The feedback has been invaluable and supportive, with very little of it being just "real sux, ogg rulez!" etc but instead very clear, concise, technical and useful - keep it coming!

    Please continue to bear with me as I test different settings or versions of ices/ogg libraries. The high bitrate streams are fine, but I'm trying to get the optimal quality for modem users at the moment. This may not be possible, but I've had a few suggestions which might work. This will mean, as I said in my post to the announce list, that streams may come and go as I try different setups - please be patient :)

    Hopefully soon we will be able to offer these streams on a larger scale going through our content distribution network and available in pop-ups on the homepage, as opposed to the current setup (which seems to be coping remarkably well :)

    Many thanks have to go to the BBC management for letting us continue with these trials - as a few people have noted, the language used on the ogg page suggest we're not management, but techies who have been given the opportunity to play with stuff we think is cool, and hopefully we can eventually persuade people higher up to take this really seriously - after all, it's in our interest as a public broadcaster to do so as we're making our services available to the highest number of users - plus of course, it's free software so we're not limited in what we can do with it.

    Thanks! Let the trolling begin..
    • Jonathan, what is the best way for us to show support for BBC streaming Ogg? I can see two obvious ways: actually listening to the Ogg streams so that you can shows your logs to management or voicing support through the Ogg feedback e-mail address you have set up.

      Which method would be best? Do you know of any other ways to show support?

  • The problem is inertia (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Gossy ( 130782 )
    Hands up who has more than 1GB of mp3s? How about 5GB? 10GB? 20GB? 50GB?

    I'll bet a lot of you have huge collections of mp3s, and at the least a few gigabytes. Now just think about how long it'd take to rip all your cds again, download the downloaded tracks again (if you can even find them in .ogg format).

    Think of the portable, car or hifi mp3 players you invested in that can't play the files, which will mean you'll need to keep every track on your hard drive twice, once in .ogg and once in .mp3. All for a little bit more quality? I can tell a 192Kbps from a CD, but damn - it's more than good enough to listen to on the whole.

    I can't really see .ogg taking off the way mp3 has. Nearly everyone has heard of mp3s, in the newspapers, on TV, they know what Napster is, they know how to create and share mp3s.

    The inertia behidn MP3 is too big to bring a total change in formats for most people for I'd say around 3-5 years. DVDs have been around for a while now, and STILL most people have a video player, huge amounts of videos are still sold and rented. Probably an unfair comparison - cheap DVD recorders aren't around - but you get the point.

    Maybe for some .ogg is worthwhile - you have just started building your collection of music files from your CD collection, don't have an mp3 player, and have lots of time on your hands. For the average person though, I'd be amazed if they ever hear of .ogg, let alone switch their whole collections over.
  • Does anyone know of a streaming Ogg capable player for MacOS X? I've had trouble finding one in between trying to get Apple to realize they should include Ogg support in iTunes.

    I have an Ogg plugin for QuickTime, but I just can't get streaming Ogg to work.
  • And now... Radio 4 will explode.

    BOOM

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