Hi Gerv,
the last time I tried the dshow filters on a Vista system with Windows
Media Player, about in april, it had a really great usability issue:
it did not associated the ogg file type with WMP on install.
Therefore I was able to play back OGG media when directly opened from
Windows Media Player, but when I simply double-clicked on an OGG icon,
the usual open-with dialog popped up. Also, I WAS NOT ABLE to teach the
system to open OGG with WMP. In the moment I set WMP as the default
application for OGG, it has forgotten my settings. It was like with the
good old Internet Explorer 6, which, on every machine I tried it,
always asked on startup if it should be the default browser or not -
regardless of the state of the checkbox on the same dialog about my
willingness to see that dialog ever again.
If this state - that the OGG directshow filters does not register the
right file types to the right app - is still persistent, it is quite
pointless to suggest the directshow codecs to anyone.
Videolan's VLC has a nice homepage (
http://videolan.org) with an easy download path.
On the other hand, I think, VLC has some patent issues with other
supported formats (for example MPEG2). It may be plausible, that
anyone, who downloads and installs it, and uses it for MPEG2 demuxing,
commits a patent violation, at least in most of the developed
countries. Probably some clever branching of VLC could solve that
problem. In that case, it would be possible for Videolan to have a
download page like
getfirefox.com.
Regards,
Gergely Mate
Hungary