Ogg Vorbis in The Guardian (UK) Options

[Tomb]

I, like many, use the ogg vorbis encoder. This article in today's Guardian (UK) may be of interest. In summary the writer states that ogg is a music file format without support or hope. Any thoughts?

[Mercurio]

On osnews there is a "Review: The OGG-Compatible iRiver E10"
this is the start:

"Everytime we feature a multimedia device review here at OSNews the question is always the same: "...but does it support OGG?"

So, it seems that
- Iriver supports Vorbis
- geeks (and lead users) always ask for it.

I think there is no way from a player other than iPod to enter in the (small? high-priced?) segment of "audio enthusiasts" without vorbis.

[rjamorim]

I think there is no way from a player other than iPod to enter in the (small? high-priced?) segment of "audio enthusiasts" without vorbis.

Don't confuse "audio enthusiasts" with "computer nerds".

[Mercurio]

Don't confuse "audio enthusiasts" with "computer nerds".

I'm sure most of audio enthusiasts neither need, know, or use Vorbis, but all new "high quality" players I'm seeing these days support ogg Vorbis, more than the past. (but Creative, Microsoft and Apple, of course)

It seems Vorbis support is almost mandatory to differentiate your product if you don't have a large user base, high marketing budget, and you don't want to produce extremely cheap low-quality players.

Am I wrong?

off-topic: Vorbis is used by Wiktionary!!!
And publicized with an how-to page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_help_%28Ogg%29

[rjamorim]

(but Creative, Microsoft and Apple, of course)

Creative, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Panasonic, Philips, SanDisk, Archos...

The list goes on and on.

It seems Vorbis support is almost mandatory to differentiate your product if you don't have a large user base, high marketing budget, and you don't want to produce extremely cheap low-quality players.

Am I wrong?

Yes. If you want differentiation, it's much easier and cheaper to create a different, compelling design than adapting and optimizing Tremor to work on your hardware platform (unlike MP3 and WMA, you usually don't find highly optimized Vorbis libraries from the chip vendors themselves).