Re: [gst-devel] Re: Helix Player virtual team meeting

[Rob Lanphier <robla real com>]

On Thu, 2003-12-11 at 20:29, Luis Villa wrote:
> Just to be clear, I'm ready to accept binary-only stuff /only/ if the
> framework is Free,

It is.

>  and /if/ the framework supports open/Free
> alternatives to all the binary-only bits.

It does.  H.263 video and Ogg Vorbis audio are perfectly competent
solutions, and we have decoders for those.  We also support Ogg Vorbis
encode.  H.263 video isn't state of the art, but it's better than
MPEG-2, which is still relatively common.  Ogg Vorbis is pretty good
audio, which doesn't stream very well, but it has its place.

Our Producer framework isn't as mature as our Client framework, so it
doesn't support nearly as many datatypes.  The Helix DNA Client
architecture is a renamed and more mature version of the RealSystem G2
architecture, which we released in 1998, and have worked with partners
to enable support for over 50 different media types.  The Helix DNA
Producer architecture made its debut with the Helix initiative in 2002,
so it has had the chance to accumulate the kind of support we have on
the client.

Moreover, its all part of a framework that supports a lot of different
codecs and advanced applications.  As Ogg Theora matures, it's a
relatively simple exercise to plug that right into the framework.  We'd
love to see someone write a Speex plugin as well.  This could all be
done in a fully open source solution.

>  _if_ those goals are met, then
> frankly, I don't care what Real's 'ideals' are, or how many binary-only
> bits they ship, because if they try to screw us, we have the code, and
> we have alternatives.

Whew...we're making progress!  :)

Yes


-- 
Rob Lanphier, Helix Community Coordinator - RealNetworks
http://helixcommunity.org http://rtsp.org http://realnetworks.com