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We often broadcast in the experimental, free (as in freedom) Ogg/Theora format. Your normal, default media player may not support this, so we suggest that you download one of the following free players for your platform (they're listed in order of success that the author has had with each):
Windows
VLC.
Mac OS X
VLC or MPlayer OS X.
Linux
VLC, Helix Player, MPlayer or Xine.
Once you have the new player installed you will need to point it at the stream you wish to watch. Do this by using "open URL", "play location", "open sequence" or "open web location" or using the address bar if it has one. You will need to provide it with a full URL to the stream. So type or copy and paste in the URL, it will look something like this: http://live1.vaguetv.com:8000/dorkbotbcnvideo.ogg.
You can also visit our streaming server's status at any time page and if there are any streams available, click on the link for that stream. You will also find audio streams here, so look for the ones that explicitly say ogg/theora The status pages can be found at:
This will open an .m3u file, which contains meta information about the stream. One problem you may experience is that it opens your default player, which may not support Ogg/Theora. So you may have to drag the link onto the player that you do wish to use. If in doubt, use the manual method described above. Remember that on the VagueTV home page there is a list of the currently broadcast streams.
The Ogg/Theora open, free video platform is one that has been collaboratively developed to offer royalty-free, quality video encoding software for video production and streaming. It is experimental and under-development but is already proving to give good results. At the moment it is experimental for VagueTV.com, but we will increasingly be using it for all future streaming, in place of other commercial alternatives. All well and good I hear you say? Well yes, but there is a draw-back: not all players, especially the more commerical ones that come with your computer by default support Ogg/Theora. Hence the need for the instructions above ;-)
Article copyright (c) 2006 VagueTV.com. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".