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The case for using non-proprietary formats

M

Mishal

Active Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2005
Messages
256
Before starting off any discussion related to ripping of the TG/FG episodes, I must say I appreciate VUK's efforts highly and thank him for the stuff that I would otherwise not be able to get.

However, I am a fan of open-source software and anything non-proprietary in general. So, I wanted to ask whether it would be possible for VUK to rip the episodes using some non-proprietary format (like ogg vorbis) for the audio rather than mp3 (which is proprietary) from now on? The avi files that we download is a container file that contains the video and the audio. While the video is compessed using DivX (which is free), the audio is mp3 which is not free.

I am sure many will simply not see the point of this. But since encoding in non-proprietary formats are no more a hassle and involves no sacrifice in quality, I would definitely prefer it over proprietary formats because then I know that I am not using something that I have not paid for.

For more info:
http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/proprietary_media_formats.htm
http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/creating_accessible_multimedia_for_the_web.htm

What do the others say? :)
 
You guessed it, I don't see the point of this, as far as I know VLC media player is free, winamp is free, and since probably 95% of the users here use Windows, Windows media player is free.

I like open source too, don't get me wrong, Open office is a very good replacement for MS Office for example, since MS Office costs 100s of $$. But in this case I don't see the point, how much has it cost you to watch downloaded TG episodes so far (except for the internet bill)?
 
While MP3 is proprietary, I can't think of a single program that doesn't support it and as said, there are tons of them that are free too, so I don't see the problem.
 
if it's the fact that it is considered to be illegal to use MP3 codec without a license then considering that a TV show is being illegally ripped anyway, there seems to be little point in doing this.
 
jensked said:
There are not many problems with the current releases. There are only a few people that come here to ask how they can play the vids, so let's not change the fileformat now everything is working :).

Never change a winning team.
Click to expand...

If it aint broke, dont try and fix it :thumbsup:
 
Haha...I agree with you guys. But you see, I use Linux and use of the mp3 codec is illegal for me. To be very practical, it doesn't really matter because I live in a country where piracy is so rampant that an original copy of MS Windows or original MS Office is as rare as a Dodo bird.

However, I still raised the question because I feel better using non-proprietary stuff.

considering that a TV show is being illegally ripped anyway,
Click to expand...
If BBC starts selling TG on DVDs, I will stop downloading and legally buy their stuff. As long as that does not happen, they have no moral basis to sue me. Of course they may have a legal basis, but as you can see, to me morality is more important than legality :)

There are only a few people that come here to ask how they can play the vids
Click to expand...
You only need to install a very small codec to play .ogg People would get used to it pretty soon.

But overall, I guess its pointless for the majority of you. So I need not waste your and my time trying to change a system that already works. :)
 
Yeah, I'm not arguing that you have some valid points, I'm just saying that the benefits don't come close to the drawbacks.
 
I'm surley not against a matroska container with .ogg, but simple Xvid with mp3 works just as good ;-)
 
You may use an MP3 file at your home for personal use. You can also download the xmms player with MP3 support from most RPM sites. So even on linux you can view the shows that VUK as made for all of us. As for Windows and Mac, both gates and jobs have paid for you guys to use MP3. (That price is passed along to all of us windows / mac users). Anyway, you don't have to pay to play back MP3 files, you only have to pay to encode them.
 
^so you have to pay to be able to encode .... but there's so many free music/media players such as iTunes that lets you encode CD's to MP3 ... in the case of iTunes you can even convert into MP3 from other programs.
So, from what I understand from that, I'm guessing the developers should be the ones that pay for all of the countless users of the software to encode their MP3s ? That would seriously cost a whole fortune, even for a big company, such as Apple. And if iTunes is free, where do they get the money, from the sales of their products ? but those are limited, however, the distribution of their iTunes is unlimited .... that would be contrary to logistics here .... how the hell does it work ?
 
I once did research on the audio codecs, but can't remember one being required to pay for MP3 encoding.

After all, there are some open-source based MP3 encoders, most notably LAME.
 
I don't see the problem here really... Might be a bit slow today, but everything has been working fine for so long, why the hell would you want to change it? My DVD/DivX player does not do ogg and ogg is stupid anyways, MP3 is much more prevelant and much more support for it. :bangin:
 
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