Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux" 370
An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."
Ogg Theora? (Score:5, Informative)
And even if you think it is illegal to watch MPEG on Linux in the EU, the crime would be committed by the veiwer, not the broadcaster.
Hello, there are open-source players for WMV3 (Score:5, Informative)
Yes I think it still has patent issues or something but in Europe I don't think that matters.
realplayer (Score:5, Informative)
looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Informative)
This is the market share for browsers as of Nov 2006:
Microsoft Internet Explorer, 80.56%
Firefox, 13.50%
Safari, 4.03%
Netscape, 0.83%
Opera, 0.67%
This is the market share for Operating Systems as of Nov 2006:
Windows XP, 84.95%
Windows 2000, 5.46%
Mac OS, 4.10%
Windows 98, 1.90%
MacIntel, 1.29%
Windows ME, 0.91%
Windows NT, 0.76%
Linux, 0.37%
You could argue for better firefox support, but as much as we love linux, I suppose they have no obligation to make it work for something that is that small minority among desktop users.
Re:Where's the illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:2, Informative)
Mine are from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
2006------------IE7-----IE6-----IE5-----Fx------M
November--------7.1%----49.9%---2.9%----29.9%---2
2006------------WinXP---W2000---Win98---WinNT---W
November--------74.9%---8.0%----1.0%----0.4%----1
Mac and Linux seem to pretty close....No?
No codecs required, either (Score:5, Informative)
Going straight Theora+Vorbis wouldn't work that well, since the user would have the install the codecs first and Vorbis/Theora support is severely lacking on OS X.
Quoting the site:
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah?
Where did you get your numbers?
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
Aggregate IE: 59.9
Firefox: 29.9
Mozilla: 2.5
Netscape 7/8
Opera 1.5
Which one of those doesn't pass the Acid2? Only IE. 40 percent of the world uses a browser that supports standards enough to render Acid2, and IE's numbers have declined while the rest have only gained.
"You could argue for better firefox support, but as much as we love linux, I suppose they have no obligation to make it work for something that is that small minority among desktop users."
If you scroll down to the OS stats:
XP: 71.6
Win2K 13.6
Win98 2.6
WinNT
W2k3 1.7
Linux 3.2
Mac 3.3
But then it's not about "supporting linux" it's about using _standard_ codecs and standard files. Wmv is "Windows Only" and not a standard where other codecs are actual standards and are cross platform as a _result_ of being standards.
But hey, you're here to troll for Microsoft instead of contribute any facts to the discussion.
By the way, even though it has the least market share, Opera kicks all other browsers.
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BMO
Re:Please don't do this (Score:5, Informative)
Really? Why?
And that reason is???
That wouldn't be true, of course.
The patents on MPEG-1 have long ago expired. It has pretty good quality (better than Theora/VP3) when encoded with a recent implimentation (ie. libavcodec for video, twolame for audio). And more than that, it is by far the most widely compatible format around, supported by just about every video player made in the past several years, on just about every single platform around.
I, however, do. The VP3 codec is hated by just about everyone who knows anything about video.
It has really poor video quality, compared to even much older video codecs.
It is very CPU-intensive to encode.
It's playback performance is horrible. Once you reach resolutions where a full frame can't fit in your CPU cache, you get performance worse than codecs like h.264.
In some 4 years of Theora's development, Xiph hasn't removed any of VP3's limitations, nor added any advantages over the original VP3 codec. Since they've frozen the bitstream, even the potential for them to do any of that has passed...
I was somewhat active in the Theora development process some time ago, but I've long since given it up for dead.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Informative)
The stats at www.w3schools.com are not representative of what most people are using, they represent what Web developers and other technically inclined people are using. Think about who visits www.w3schools.com.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:4, Informative)
Your numbers are suspect. According to the market research company IDC, 25% of servers and 2.8% of desktop computers ran Linux as of 2004. [wikipedia.org] This is consistent with the 3.3% share of web hits that w3schools measures as of last month.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Please don't do this (Score:3, Informative)
And the answer to your question is: no, Snow and Dirac can't be easily inserted into Ogg. Ogg's inability to handle arbitrary codecs is one of the reasons I don't recommend Ogg.
They also don't fully support..... (Score:2, Informative)
And I quote.
"In what browsers can I view the live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union?
The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union supports Internet Explorer 5 and higher, Netscape Navigator 6 and higher. If you encounter problems with a lower version of your browser, the browser should be updated to facilitate the live streaming media service. Firefox and Opera will be supported with a minimal of functionalities: No possibilities to use the Table Of contents for positioning the streaming. All the buttons for the player will disappear and the standard buttons of the player must be used to control the stream."
There stream is nothing more then mms that works with mplayer of properly configured at the servers end. This is a typical fuckup of a admin who doesn't actually know anything about computers and how to stream a video.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Informative)
So post stats from somewhere else. At least I left a reference, as opposed to the parent which didn't leave a reference.
And here's a question, how many bots ID themselves as IE?
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
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BMO
Re:Please don't do this (Score:3, Informative)
Definately. If an interested party would pick-up Snow, finalize the bitstream, and start adding some performance optimizations for encoding and high-def playback, it could beat-out every other video codec out there. The quality/bitrate is easily better than even h.264, and can scale down to ridiculously low bitrates while being completely watchable.
Nope. SnoPenguin nailed it. Ogg is terribly codec-specific.
MKV is gaining in popularity, partly because it can handle just about any audio or video format, including Vorbis, as well as subtitles, menus, chapters, etc.
Re:We need to get our story straight... (Score:3, Informative)
Not at all. Linux users can play WMV video and audio. As of a few months ago, you don't even need the binary codec DLLs or an x86 system for the large majority of WMV video and audio formats.
The reason that's not openly supported by organizations, of course, is the patent licensing fees, which prevent most distros from including programs like MPlayer to begin with. Since the EU is repeatedly trying to get software patents into law, it would be rather hypocritical for them to suggest programs like MPlayer, wouldn't it?
Linux isn't the issue, it's just the reason it was posted on
The issue is a government that requires you to use commercial software to play. One that uses secret, undocumented file formats (even Real video would be a bad choice, in this regard). etc.
Quicktime, at least sticks with open and standard video/audio codecs, and MP4 container, despite the patent issues.
And if they put a little bit of effort into it, they could use patent-free formats as well.
Re:Why is WMV so popular anyways? (Score:4, Informative)
1) Also encoding for Real Player means extra encoding fees,
2) Although Flash claims to support live streaming, the license fees for it's servers to make a viable live streaming infrastructure are completely ridiculous so it is only good for progressive download.
3) No one offered any other format,
4) One of the largest networks in the world, Akamai, only has a small number of Real Server licenses left and they are dwindling due to lack of demand,
5) Live streaming from a whole network is a different ballgame to streaming from one server. Only Real and WMS can handle it properly. I know Icecast probably
From my own experience in smaller scale streaming I have not had much success using a Theroa/Icecast solution because there is no basic application just to grab V4L and convert it to a stream (I even tried coding one myself before running out of time and getting stumped since I lack the skills), though you can use ffmpeg2theroa to grab from a DV CAM. I tried Flumotion but it only seems to work with the latest and greatest version of Fedora at any given time. It's also way to complicated. Exactly what is all this "planet", "atmosphere", "streams" stuff about? I got nowhere fast trying to install it on CentOS4 which is what the enocding box runs (and I am not in a position to suddenly change OS since it does lots of other functions).
If you are really concerned about this ... (Score:3, Informative)
Send a protest by email, or better yet, written letter to them: streaming.helpline@consilium.europa.eu (technical) or Public.info@consilium.europa.eu (organizational),
Council of the European Union
Rue de la Loi, 175 B-1048 Bruxelles
Telephone (32-2) 281 61 11
Fax (32-2) 281 69 99
Contact your local/national members of the european parliament or even better, members of the council directly.
Microsoft and related industries has a lot of well paid lobbyists at the EU, open source advocates and private people who just want to use Linux as an alternative have nothing.
Make some pressure.
Re:looking at it from their perspecive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is wrong with QuickTime, its open (Score:4, Informative)
Because Quicktime is despised just slightly less than Ogg.
Off the top of my head:
Significant overhead.
Metadata at the end of files (like AVI).
This precluding good playback of partial files, and causes really terrible problems with partially damaged MOV files.
Unbelivably large number of different ways to do anything.
An unbelivably huge and complex standard that probably nobody on earth understands entirely.
14 different versions of the standard, and a field in the MOV header to dictate which version of the standard the player should use to read the file.
And finally: patents
If quicktime wasn't so horrible, you certainly wouldn't have ever seen formats like Ogg or MKV.
Re:Forget it (Score:3, Informative)
>One serious problem is that there are no working Theora VFW plugins (some exist, but they are unusable). You *have* to install VLC or mplayer.
I am an mplayer man, but Realplayer supports ogg, what is wrong with that? In the UK at least most people will have it as it is required for BBC and so on.