A question i have is why would anyone want to use anything else but mp3s?

I see requests occasionally on this site over the years to add these formats to the player, however none of them have proven successful, and most are cumbersome and have a complete lack of support which makes them even more difficult to use.

This is not to say that MP3's cant or wont be replaced by a better format down the line, but based on the current storage options, support, and small footprint of decoding software and hardware, why would you go with anything else?

FLAC - One word...Lossless!

So reversible encoding - but still small footprint. That's good, yuh?

The arguments are really quality- or ideologiaclly- based rather than file size based.

eg, As mentioned above, FLAC is a lossless compression, so really is CD quality. Whether that really matters in a car-based player is open to debate, but if people are also using their players with a high end home stereo system, or even just the files through an HTPC, then it boviously makes sense to have the best quality that you can.

Ogg Vorbis is a truely open spec, with no patent royalties required. Even though Fraunhoffer (spelling?) didn't appear to collect many royalties from his early mp3 patents, I'm guessing that he is from the mp3pro licensing. Ogg also has some technical potential that mp3 doesn't appear to, such as compressing 5.1 audio streams. Ogg quality is said to be on a par with mp3pro.

I'd like Flac, as I said elsewhere and in the wishlist forum too. Just because it's lossless. I'd like any other lossless format, actually. Flac seems good ALSO because it allows gapless playback too, has its own "id3" tag system, and aother small things. But its compression ratio seems to be not so convenient. Personally I don't care. I care more about quality.