Re: [Fsfe-uk] Open Standards-based DVD Authoring

[Chris Croughton]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 04:43:08PM +0000, Neil Darlow wrote:

> Isn't it about time we had an open standards-based authoring/playing
> tool-chain (with full support for menus) so we can coerce hardware
> manufacturers into adding support for open formats into their products?

How do you intend to "coerce hardware manufacturers"?  What incentive
would they have to support Yet Another Incompatible Format?  What is the
demand?  In particular, if there aren't freely-available players for
them then such formats would be lost before they start, no one is going
to be authoring a DVD which only they can play.

This is true of formats like Ogg/Vorbis for audio still.  Very few of
the people I know who I would want to send audio files have even heard
of Ogg, let alone have software and hardware to play it (yes, they could
install Audacity for example but why would they want to, just to hear a
file which I could as easily provided in a popular format?).  Its
acceptance is growing slowly, but it has been several years already and
there are still few hardware players which support it.  It's seen as a
"geek format" still.  Whether the recent MP3 fuss will change that is to
be seen, my suspicion is that the tolerance for such broad patents is
diminishing and it will get squashed.

Chris C