Mozilla Goes to Bat for Open-Source Video on the Web

Now all I need is someone to release an .ogg player for my car in the US.

Hope it works. We have left TV behind and get everything from the internets now. More content and more ways to get it, perfect.

t-b-b-c: Your little media player, that does .ogg with bluetooth to the car system?

/me looks at the Cowon S9 and drools

course...my car doesn't have BT

I would like an indash player for my car, preferably that will play off an SD card or at least USB. I know they have a few varieties around Europe but everytime I search still nothing here in the US.

Have a separate player just seems like too much hassle, but that may be what I have to do when it comes time to get a radio for the old del Sol. As much fun as road noise is, sometimes 50 miles of it gets a little old, some tunes would be nice.

I just use a Zvue 250 (~$80 at Wal-Mart(tm), as I recall), which I bought specifically for the Ogg Vorbis support. (The ability to handle XVid video was a bonus). Attach it to my car stereo with an adapter and away I go.

I just listen to Triple J... No ads, great rock and mostly new stuff, or ABC Classics... No ads, great Classical Music.

DrDubious, that does look neat, a bit cheaper than the Cowons as well. Does it play while plugged in?

I have been thinking of getting an amplifier and just hook a portable player to that directly, so if I could play the player while plugged in I won't have to worry about the battery.

As I've taken the device on some pretty long drives, I can say for certain that it does, indeed, continue to play while charging. I've actually been surprisingly pleased by this little device.

I also figured out how to get mencoder to generate videos for it, too.

I have Sony in-dash 1U car stereo. It has bluetooth and a line-in and USB port on the front. It doesn't play OGG from CD or USB but you can hook your (OGG supporting) media player to it using bluetooth ot the line-in. It works great.

Not sure if it's really odd or not, but it SEEMS odd to me that everyone seems to be focussing on the video tag support and completely glossing over the audio tag support.

Theora is okay (beats old-school mpeg1 at least) but especially after taking 8 friggin' years for Xiph to get it from "alpha 1" to a real release, it's probably going to seem a step down in quality from e.g. Flash video for most people.

On the other hand, Vorbis ought to be a definite step UP from the mp3 audio that seems most common on the internet. You'd think that would be worth playing up more than it has been.

(Yes, I get that the Freedom of Theora is the important bit rather than the video quality and I completely support it. Just curious why it seems like so few people are noticing the coming also-free upgrade in audio quality.)

Everywhere I've encountered Ogg on the web the quality has been, shall we say, less than optimal, and it won't stream. I end up having to download a file, or not viewing/listening.

If it works, having an open-source streaming solution backed by Mozilla would be great.

Tracyanne, I've had the same experience as you with Ogg streams ...

I suspect the "streaming" problem may be client-side problems (which I would hope Mozilla would ensure don't crop up), but can't say for sure as most of my Ogg use is "download-and-listen" anyway. I can say that the "oggcasts" I listen to seem to be a definite step UP in quality from equivalent-sized MP3 so far.