[playogg-discuss] What We Really Need is Hardware

[Sean Robinson]

Obviously pushing a different format, particularly when trying to establish a 
new standard, especially when another is greatly entrenched as the de facto 
standard, is a difficult proposition.  Look at how much effort has been made to 
establish Ogg Vorbis as the Free alternative to MP3.  Sure there has been 
progress, but it is undeniable that Vorbis remains an _alternative_, not a 
common equivalent.

What we need is a Free Hardware decoder/encoder chipset for Ogg Vorbis and 
Theora.  After all, encoding/decoding in dedicated hardware is much faster and 
less computationally and battery costly than doing the equivalent in software on 
a generic processor.  Work in this direction has been made. 
http://wiki.xiph.org/Theora_Hardware http://wiki.xiph.org/Vorbis_Hardware 
However there is no finished, mature standard chipset that all manufacturers 
could be using.

I propose that we:
-establish such a standard Ogg chipset;
-introduce it to manufacturers that already support Ogg as a better choice;
-heavily promote it to other hardware manufacturers;
-have users request it from all manufacturers;
-introduce subsidizing to make using the chipset more attractive.