Ogg and the multimedia container format struggle

There are 2 things here. Either MPC-HC wants to use the index in a remote stream, and it can do by simply seeking in that stream (very possible in HTTP) or it blindly seeks in the stream wait for the next 4 bytes of a Cluster startcode and plays from there (I believe that's the only way of seeking in Ogg). While the former may seem to do too many steps, it's actually way more efficient.

> Is anyone contacting these non-compliant Matroska
> implementations? This is something Xiph does with Ogg.

We sure do, that's why there is a field to indicate the muxing code and software that produced a file. It's some form of advertising for coders and allow us to find out bogus files and have their creator fix it. It happened many times in the past.

> There is technical and usability value to vertical integration.

Well, the problem is that Ogg is good and meant for streaming. But it's inferior in everything else. So people would have to trade all the features found and common in Matroska just so that it is 100% designed for streaming. Plus the extra container overhead and bandwidth wasting that comes with it.

Also Matroska has plenty of features, the main ones being implemented everywere because userspush coders to have them. We don't have a certification system yet, but we're thinking about it. DivX may also have something in place to certify software/devices with DivX 7. But in the end the same fragmentation happen with your vertical integration. Or are you expecting (and forcing?) all web browsers to have to support Spex, FLAC, Skeleton and the other technologies that are "vertically integrated" withing the Ogg sphere ?