Hi All

I have been living in my isolated linux/ogg/ogg_enabled_DAP island for a while and have no real idea of the prevalence of the format on Windows, OSX and iPods (being the most popular DAP).

I have been preparing audio files available for people through my website in OGG format. I have written a little blurb about the format and have mentioned (and URL linked) dbshow/XiphQT plugins for playing on Windows/MacOSX systems.

The question that I'd like answered is: Can an Average** windows/apple(iPod) user play the format using Media Player/ iTunes with minimal fuss and if they have to use plugins like dbshow/XiphQT, for example. And are iPods still OGG resistant.

Also can the average user with the standard burning programs be able to use CUE sheets for burning audio files onto CD.

Cheers in advance, Istvan

**By average I mean people who probably wouldn't be on forums like hydrogen audio and whose extent of online community interactivity would probably only extend to facebook/myspace, etc. Also, who would probably only use Windows Media Player or iTunes or whatever the standard media players are.

Pretty much no, for Windows Media Player or for Mac and iPod and iTunes. There are players out there that play ogg vorbis, including some commonly-used programs such as Winamp (though it's not nearly as common as it used to be).
My read is that Microsoft (with lots of investment in WMA) and Apple (with lots of their investment in AAC, particularly encrypted AAC from the iTunes store) has interest in letting a codec that they don't own into their universes. Both support mp3, which they don't control, but that's just because mp3 has such dominant market penetration.

Of course, there are ways around this, to varying degrees, known about by the type of people who frequent HA. But not average users, let alone my grandpa.

I don't know anything about MACs, but on Windows it is very simple to add support of Ogg Vorbis to WMP. Just install the DirectShow filters from http://www.xiph.org/dshow/.

Also there is a very nice player in works which has a good potential to steal a lot of marketshare from WMP and iTunes. It is Songbird, which is based on Mozilla core and it can do to iTunes what Firefox did to IE.

For OSX (and Windows too, although the directshow filters are probably a userfriendlier option) you can link to VLC.

You can also use "Play" under Mac OS X as a replacement for iTunes.

http://sbooth.org/Play/