On Fri, Aug 30, 2002 at 01:42:26PM +0200, Richard Atterer wrote: RA> As usual Heise got it right: RA> <http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/vza-28.08.02-000/> (German).
c't is a good info source, but this time they seem biased. First of all, they completely miss the point that you made below: RA> Thomson tolerate violations against their license are far as RA> *de*coders are concerned. <...> However, such a statement is not RA> enough for us to keep MP3 decoders in the distribution, I'm afraid. Next, their take on Ogg smells FUD: It is not a good idea as yet to rely exclusively on Ogg Vorbis, however: Even if Ogg Vorbis manages to close the quality gap between it and MP3 or even manages to get ahead of the latter, it will still take some time before Ogg-capable portable players make their appearance as hardware. IFAIK (IANA Musician) Ogg Vorbis outmatches quality of MP3 for quite some time. The hardware issue is indeed present, there is no free fixed-point Vorbis decoder yet, but there is proprietary one, which matches situation with hardware MP3 players that require loyalty fee. If I'm not missing something and there is no other obstacles to adoption of Ogg Vorbis save for inertia, the above sentence is just that, FUD. -- Dmitry Borodaenko