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67 Comments
- ArthurSucks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25No way... Lossy to lossy is ALWAYS bad. Sony did that to ATRAC and it was crap.
- rocko_stazetti, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23If Sandisk used Ogg they would really be going in the right direction.
- DIGGerPhelpsND, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16It is another proud day for proprietary formats. It's too bad though; an 8GB flash drive sounds pretty good.
- warmcat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14This isn't a matter of Open Source, this is to do with Patent law. Patents are particularly backward because you can know how to do something, even have the source to do it with, yet face serious penalties for doing it because "someone got there first". Even if you had no idea somewhat got there first.
Anyway the MP3 patents expire in 2010, not long to wait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3#Licensing_and_patent_issues - chess007, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13 Does the fact that it can play mp3 files really mean that they need a liscense? Consider that they could have made their own codec that would play mp3 files.
- Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15I absolutely refuse to buy a media player that doesn't support Ogg. As far as lossy formats go, you just can't get any better. No DRM, superior sound quality, smaller file sizes, and no rights issues. Just because the common man hasn't used Ogg historically is no reason not to start now. We all upgraded our 8-track and cassette collections when CDs came out. We can upgrade encodings as well.
- Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -11/+23If sandisk used ogg nobody would buy their products.
The right direction? I'm not sure. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15I mean if they had an itunes style converter that converts your MP3 to ogg people wouldn't care. most wouldn't even know it's not playing MP3s.
- neko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Yes, patenting algorithms is just stupid. Copyright should apply, but not a patent.
But, what can you do. - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10True, but i dont like the idea that someone can own a math formula.
They didn't invent it... the formula always existed, they just began using it one day. - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The problem that Ogg faces is two-fold. First, most players are targeting the Windows/PlayForSure/MTP "platform", and as such, use a lot of off-the-shelf Microsoft technology in their players. Since Ogg isn't supported by Microsoft, it would be a lot harder for companies like Sandisk make players, as they're have to write a lot more software.
The other is that Ogg doesn't support ID3 tags. It's tag format, Vorbis comments, are totally non-standardized. There are no defaults, like Artist, Album, Track#, Title, Year, etc... that you find in ID3. When you create Vorbis tracks, you specify your own tag fields and values. It's tricky to support reading tags in a useful way, when your player expects field the track name to be in a field named "Title", and you've stored that information in a field named "Song Name".
That being said, even if they do a half-assed job, or there are some hiccups along the way, everyone should support Vorbis. As has been said, it's as good or better quality than all the proprietary formats, and free to use. The hardware's capable of doing it, and decoding can be added via firmware for any current player. The hardware manufacturers are just too lazy to support a format that a comparatively small number of people will use.
I hope my Karma never dies, because there are currently no decent hard-drive players that have Ogg Vorbis support (or FLAC, for that matter). Furthermore, if Rio could do it 4 years ago, why do modern players still not do gapless playback? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11They should just make the Mp3 codec open source. Or people should start using Ogg, because appartently it has better sound quality.
- aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@gstuartj: I believe Quix is referring to the portable media player UI patent they sued Apple over.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9yeah the retail price is a lot cheaper than say an ipod but most stores are selling 50-70% of the retail price. but I don't think not paying for MP3 licensing would cut the price down so much.
- Ryokurin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Better sound quality is subjective. Mp3 is the ipod of audio codecs. Just about everything out supports it now, its decent enough quality, and people are familiar with it, all things that any new codec will have to overcome. If sounding better at the same bit rate was the key then some other codec such as windows media, or AAC would have surpassed mp3 years ago.
- eclectro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"VideoLan is open source, so they are not legally required by the patent owners to pay."
As long as the patent holders are nice. They could decide they don't want free open source player competition and shut off the open source players.
That's how software patents can be draconian. Of course, those countries that don't have software patents aren't legally bound by them. But the WTO wants to put software patents everywhere, and why they are a major problem. - DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Consider that they could have made their own codec that would play mp3 files."
They could have made their own implementation, but there are patents around specific parts of the format that they might still need to license.
It's a patent licensing issue, not a copyright issue. - babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5VLC is developed and hosted in the EU. The EU has rejected software patents for now. SanDisk is breaking the law in countries like the US, Australia, and potentially European countries that are not part of the EU.
SanDisk is breaking the law, but the law is wrong. No one should be allowed to have patents that prevent others from using any file format. - emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Well that's just going to generate bad press on their part, still if I were in the market for a flash player of that size it would be on my short list.
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7I believe that the issue is that Sandisk used the copyrighted MP3 decoding algorithm. Even if Sandisk made their own codec to process the MP3 files, the basic algorithm would still be present, though in a slightly different form. There's not really much way around this issue for Sandisk.
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Uh... It's not Creative that has a patent on MP3 encoding. Creative isn't even mentioned anywhere. Did you even read the article?
- gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If the MP3 encoding/decoding software is free or open source, no license fee is required. You only have to pay a lisence fee if you want to use the technology commercially. VideoLan is open source, so they are not legally required by the patent owners to pay.
- SpeckledJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's 75 cents per unit
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/ - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3LAME (is not and MP3 encoder) is probably what they're using to do the decoding. I know that even LAME, which is totally open-source and relies on none of the original MP3 code, still has legal issues. The series of steps the MP3 codec takes to accomplish its compression is patented, and employing those same steps infringes on those patents.
It's like how Apple infringed on Creative's "Zen" patent. No one accused anyone of stealing code. Creative's patent (legit or not) covers having a menu heirarchy based on song information contained within tracks on an portable audio player. The iPod clearly does the same thing. - elinenbe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If you need a player that supports Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, etc, then check out Rockbox at www.rockbox.org. Nearly every new ipod and iriver player are supported!
http://www.rockbox.org/daily.shtml - LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3MikeCerm: I'm a happy Karma listening person too, but have you seen this device yet? http://www.riovolution.org/thread/118 It's the Karma+Carbon+Chroma reincarnate. Literally. When Rio shut their doors, a company called SigmaTel who makes chipsets came in and bought all the intellectual property of the company. This included all of the engineers and developers on their products, as well as the closed firmwares that came with Gapless playback on every format, plus FLAC and Vorbis playback, as well as RioDJ and the great UI. Right now it's only in 8 and 15 gigs, but I'm sure that they'll see the error of their ways soon and upgrade those sizes to much larger.
- babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The patents on MP3 do expire in about 4 years, so it doesn't matter too much anymore. I'm still using Ogg until then, simply because I still can't use MP3.
What does matter at the moment is Theora versus all of the other video codecs. Microsoft is constantly changing and applying for patents on its WMV codec, as are Real. This means that unless something is done, the patents on the video codecs being used will never expire in time for them to become usable. - sleepless, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Hmm... I am reading everyone's comments, but I am puzzled by how the folks from VideoLan can produce a piece of software that can clearly decode mp3 files. Anyone have actual details on what the actual injuction is about?
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html
I wonder if these folks are paying a license fee for all thse cool codecs they are able to employ... :-| - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The fee would only be a dollar or two out of the price at most.
- mooninite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3April 2010 needs to hurry up and get here. Down with the MP3 patent.
I'd change to OGG, but I have 30 gigs of MP3s... *hides from patent office* - klang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You don't need an mp3 license to have your music in mp3 .. BUT if you are making a piece of commercial hardware/software to encode or play mp3, you do.
- Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@Ryokurin
MP3 is a more widely used codec because WMAs and ACCs are vendor specific; which sucks.
Ogg, although superior to mp3 in sound quality and filesize, and superior to ACC and WMA due to its open-ness, isn't popular because people don't know about it, the tools to create ogg files aren't as easy to use on OS X and Windows as they are on Linux and BSD, and only a select few media players support it.
I would like to see a move to standardize on one DRM-free, open standard and do away with all the rest. Proprietary codecs suck and open ones are good because you have more freedom that way. Of course, I don't think this will ever happen, and as somebody else said, the patent on MP3s runs out in four years anyway. - gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, unless you have lots of heavy bags full of money that you bought all that music with, you may want to hide from the RIAA as well...
- klang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4In this day and age, an "mp3 player" needs to be able to play mp3. Being able to play ogg is an added bonus. Only being able to play ogg is suicide.. Look at Sony's products .. no mp3 no sale
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4DigitAl65K:
Your argument is pretty crappy too. Yes, the iPod plays DRMed content. But it also played non-DRMed content. My iPod has no DRMed content on it.
I don't know of a single digital audio player sold today that doesn't play DRMed content. So it isn't really fair to knock the iPod for doing it. The key is that a player shouldn't lock you into DRMed content. And most (including iPod) don't. - DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2gstyartj: That's incorrect. LAME, the popular free open-source MP3 encoder does require a license fee to be paid as soon as you compile it. The developers distribute the source code only and so avoid licensing fees. As far as I know there is no license exemption for non-commercial use. If you find one please feel free to link us to it.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME
Just because VideoLan is open-source does not mean that it is exempt from licensing. If the patent holders wanted to sue for infringement, they could target anyone distributing VideoLan binaries that included a compiled MP3 codec.
Please don't misinform people on topics you clearly don't understand.
@babbling: "No one should be allowed to have patents that prevent others from using any file format."
What makes you think if I spend 10 years and millions of dollars developing a new multimedia format another business should get to use it for free? - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@ Lyco
I have seen that player, and I'm only slightly excited. It looks a bit like something that will never see US shores, and a bit dated. When Rio closed up shop, sure, I was sad, but I was also very hopeful that, with the sell-off to Sigmatel, Rio's technology would get licensed and start showing up everywhere, because Sigmatel was/is a huge technology provider in the MP3 market. It just never happened. I mean, what the hell has Sigmatel been doing, and why did they buy Rio's IP if they weren't going to leverage it at all?
I'm glad to see Karma's brains showing up somewhere, but I'd like to see more modern version of it, in a hard drive player. I want to see someone build on what Rio created, add video, and add some color to the interface. Sigmatel makes a single chip that does it all (MP3, Ogg, WMA/V, FLAC, Xvid... even h.264), with gapless, and everything. It's basically the processor from the Karma with added video decoding support. It's being sold to a number of manufacturers (including Apple), but for one reason or another, none are using all of the capabilities of the chip. Either they're just too lazy to write software to take advantage of the capabilities or, in Apple's case, they want to keep you locked to their choice of formats.
So, in conclusion, one rehashed product from a (presumably) Chinese no-name isn't good enough for me, but at least it's a start. - gstuartj, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm sorry. I did not mean to misinform anyone in my previous comment. I had been misinformed in the past, I guess. Thanks for correcting me.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The price of the license is pretty cheap. A buck a unit or less.
I don't like this license fee stuff for mp3s. So if Samsung can figure out how to break the patents, that'd be great. They must be pretty confident if they would do all this just to save $1/unit. - Joey67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"No wonder SanDisk products are cheap (in price)"
The fact that they actually manufacture the flash memory that other companies have to buy has a bit to do with it as well. - SpeckledJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"You don't need an mp3 license to have your music in mp3"
But you do need a license to have created them in the first place, and to play them back, even if you're doing all that on your computer. If you've bought Windows or MacOS you've already paid for a decoder license. - emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've been running that on my iHP-120 for at least a year now.
If my MP3 player died there's not a product on the market I'd want to replace it with right now, I don't think. - MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Creative is probably going to go after Microsoft first. They have the deepest pockets, but are also most likely to settle quickly. Also, if Apple and Microsoft both settle, that will make Creative's patents look more legitimate for smaller guys who can't afford to settle and think they can fight it in the courts.
- DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1gstyartj: Aww man, now I feel bad for snapping. Let's go compile LAME and make sweet music 8D
- mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"What makes you think if I spend 10 years and millions of dollars developing a new multimedia format another business should get to use it for free?"
Maybe not, but you should either have to charge, or not, from the very beginning. You shouldn't be allowed to submarine it and let all kinds of infrastructure be built up around it, then pop up and start charging at a later date.
Also, a lot of software patents are *****, either being concepts that are obvious to anyone in the field (like Creative's patent, although I can't blame them from sparring with Apple with it, since Apple is trying to come after them with patents as well) or being things that were conceived/used previously but not patented. Those get overturned eventually, but they usually extort hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more out of companies before that happens, and they keep it after the patent is lost. There are few forms of life lower than patent trolls.
Finally, there's the issue of monopolies and compatibility; software patents can be used to keep formats and things proprietary and prevent competition. Competition is nothing but good for the market, and when prevented, the consumer loses out. - Himself, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1here here
of course, there's always cowan! - astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Sandisk is the way to go for Mp3 Players... interesting they were taken down, I think Apple had something to do with this.
- gondoi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This just goes to show... Germans love David Hasslehoff.
- charlietuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0yes
My Cowan iAudio works fine with Vorbis files ripped by Sound Juicer (see prior posting). - iceperson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"We all upgraded our 8-track and cassette collections when CDs came out."
You're comparing tech that the average person can tell the difference between to obscure technobabble that Joe Sixpack can't tell the difference in. MP3 works, and sounds fine to 99% of the population. Other formats will fail for the same reason Bluray and HD-DVD will... the general population can't tell the difference between them (other than one version isn't compatible with little suzie's new Creative "iPod") -
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