Include MPlayer in beta?

[Gerald Henriksen]

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 10:54:02 -0400, you wrote:

>Jef Spaleta hit the nail on the head.  The desktop should have ogg in your
>face ready to play a few sample ogg tunes. Also some nice eye candy video
>using an open codec.  If the equivalent applications like musicmatch,
>cooledit, iTunes, movie editor/creator, dvd and tv capture card sotware,etc
>were all wrapped up into a awe gazing IDE-type application,  then regular
>users would realize they can click a few times and start creating (even if
>it merely ripping) the content under the open codec.  Different av formats
>(codecs) survive only because of the ease of the tools that create them.

Different av formats survive because of the content available for them
and/or the hardware to play them.

Both DVD (mpeg2/ac3) and mp3 are here for the long run simply because
the consumer hardware is widely available and the content to play on
that hardware is available. 

With Windows Media Player, Quicktime, and Real benefit from their
respective promoters paying the cost to provide the content for free
(movie trailers, etc) on behalf of the content owners.

The new online music stores like iTunes Music Store exist due to the
digital rights management, something that is impossible in an open
codec system.

Despite this apparent negativity I do wish that we could move to open
codecs, but I won't be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.