Hi All ! I know that Restricted Multimedia formats are achiles's heel of Open-Source world, but there may be possible answer. Because web services becoming more commonplace, it could be possible to write a web application, that does just this - recodes Restricted formats into Open-Source formats (-> OGG Theora & Ogg Vorbis). Since proprietary decoders and encoders running on web server, only 1 server must buy those codecs (or exist in a country, which cannot enforce patents). It is even possible to integrate this webservice into third-party applications by using plugins. That is: -Plug-in for FireFox will allow you to click on a website to download MP3, but this will be redirected to the recoding server, so you will get OGG Vorbis downloaded. -Plug-in for Miro - will enable to download MPEG Videos, but this will be redirected to the recoding server, so you will get OGG Theora downloaded. It will allow IP-TV for Linux. -If you just have MP3's lying around your hard disk - no problem - just upload them via web-interface, so it will be recoded to Open formats. -etc... This will allow doing all favorite stuff, without using Pacman codecs. I'm not sure if this can handle streaming video, but for rest of the cases this should work. What do you think of such an idea? -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org