sojyujai

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Where's the Ogg and Flac?

Oct 13, 2006

Rating: 3 out of 10 (Poor)
Pros: Great feature set but...
Cons: Missing ogg and flac
Opinion:
Here comes a rant. What is it with companies like Archos, Sandisk et al. that refuse to provide support for open source codecs like ogg and flac?

Look, these codecs are open and free and so should be easier and cheaper to include than restricted formats - like say, mp3. Why the heck can't they include them? Are their processors too weak to playback these formats? Are they afraid of the GPL? I seriously hope they aren't that dumb. Is it laziness? Or maybe it's pressure from Microsoft and all the other DRM interests out there. It turns my stomach.

I've been eyeing the Archos AV devices since the 400 series. There's no doubt the feature sets of these players are fantastic. They're expensive but to me - well worth the price.

I have a huge collection of live concert audio. It's all in lossless flac format. I don't want to have to take the time to re-encoded it as mp3 and besides, live audio generally sounds bad when re-encoded in lossy formats. The 160GB drive on the 504 would be perfect for carrying around lots of high quality flacs. If only...

With ogg and flac support I'd buy the 504 in minute. Heck I would have bought the AV400 two years ago. Here's hoping that they release plugins to provide ogg and flac support for the x04 series. But until they start supporting open standards I won't be supporting them. Rating of poor.