5071415
story
Comments: 640 +- Technology: Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs on Thursday July 02 2009, @02:03PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicmediaall.gif); width:73px; height:59px;
media
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicinternet.gif); width:70px; height:73px;
internet
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicit.gif); width:75px; height:61px;
it
snydeq writes "Major browser vendors have been unable to agree on an encoding format they will support in their products, forcing the W3C to drop audio and video codecs from HTML 5, the forthcoming W3C spec that has been viewed as a threat to Flash, Silverlight, and similar technologies. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions on the situation, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' HTML 5 editor Ian Hickson wrote to the whatwg mailing list. Apple, for its part, won't support Ogg Theora in QuickTime, expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free. Opera and Mozilla oppose using H.264 due to licensing and distribution issues. Google has similar reservations, despite already using H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome. Microsoft has made no commitment to support <video>."
Related Stories
One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they
need no answer.
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.
Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is a stupid question but why do the vendors have a say what goes into the spec and what doesn't? Isn't it up to them to choose to implement the spec fully or not? FFS just make it Ogg Vorbis/Theora and if Apple doesn't want to support it then Safari can just not support that part of the spec. It isn't like any of the browser are 100% complient anyway.
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps because there is no point having a standard if no one is willing to adopt it.
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not that apple won't adopt it, it's that apple *can't* adopt it, and nor can nokia, and nor can sony erricson, and nor can RIM, and nor can any of the other smart phone makers. There is *no* hardware support for decoding Ogg Theora, that makes it totally unsuitable for the task at hand. Even ignoring the submarine patent risk and the fact that it's far worse quality than h.264.
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:5, Insightful)
The stated reason is that, if vendors will refuse to implement a portion of the spec, that part shouldn't be in the spec. The spec isn't supposed to force vendors to implement something, it's supposed to be a common set of rules that everyone can follow, and mandating Theora is counter to that goal.
Sure, but there needs to be a way to distinguish between:
No standards body worthy of the slightest respect should ever concern itself with that second category.
I am not fond of putting it this way, but I think what really needs to happen is for the average user to grow a pair and realize why Item B is not in their interests and never will be. So long as the masses of users have no understanding of these things, it is always going to be an uphill battle to maintain an Internet that is as free and open as possible.
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. Mozilla have supported Ogg Vorbis and Theora as of 3.5 and it works pretty good from the demos I have used. The W3C needs to ignore everyone and push forward with Ogg support in the spec. If hardware acceleration is a problem then work with companies to get it supported in hardware. I know it won't be easy but saying "ugh that is gonna be too hard, lets just drop it from the spec" is stupid, work with Nvidia and ATI and Intel, etc. to get h/w support for Ogg. I am not a specialist so I have no idea how hard it would be to get h/w support for Ogg up and running but I know that my iRiver H10 mp3 player had Ogg support back in 2003 or so, so I am sure it is possible without _too_ much work.
Parent
Re:Why do the vendors have a say? (Score:5, Informative)
> The W3C needs to ignore everyone and push forward with Ogg support in the spec
As much as I'd like Ogg Theora support all around, doing what you propose just leads to a useless spec (useless because implementors don't actually follow it, so you can't rely on using it).
> work with Nvidia and ATI and Intel, etc. to get h/w support for Ogg.
The issue is hardware support in the form of ASICs for decoding theora; none of the companies you mentioned are relevant to that. The hardware issue is on cell phones and the like, not desktops, in case you missed that.
The problem might be worked around somewhat by using DSPs and software decoding optimized for those DSPs, but that's not quite clear.
> my iRiver H10 mp3 player had Ogg support
Ogg Vorbis, not Ogg Theora. There's a huge difference in terms of computational complexity.
You seem to be somewhat confused about what Ogg is. It's just a container format. For a real life analogy, think shipping containers. They come in a small number of shapes and sizes, but each one can contain anything from lots of barbie dolls to lots of sewing needles to a single chunk of industrial machinery. Just because you have someone (say a toy store) who knows how to open a container and then sell the barbie dolls they find therein doesn't mean that person will be able to to open that same container and then make effective use of the industrial machinery or sewing needles inside. The situation with container formats and codecs is quite similar.
Parent
Re:Then html5 wont exist (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides all the professional tools do not support it so it wont ever be used
Which professional tools are these? Most video editing software I've seen uses either QuickTime or Windows Media for exporting, and both of these have (free) plugins for encoding Theora (and Dirac). You wouldn't want to use Theora as an intermediate format - something like MJPEG or Pixlet with no inter-frame compression is better for that - but exporting from most tools is pretty trivial.
Parent
Apple's concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple, for its part, won't support Ogg Theora in QuickTime, expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free.
Or perhaps their concern is precisely because of this fact?
Re:Apple's concern (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:5, Interesting)
No, if something being royalty-free were a downside they would not have included a BSD userspace with OS X. While Ogg Theora is royalty free, there are no -known- patent violations. As I recall back when Vorbis was getting off the ground, the implication was made that people with patents wouldn't care unless it got off the ground and then they would start looking for violations.
Basically, Theora and Vorbis are huge unknowns with potential patent bombs in them, regardless of what the developers and /. thinks. And all it takes is someone with a patent and the muster to enforce it and everyone who implemented them in their browser suddenly has a huge problem.
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:4, Interesting)
> While Ogg Theora is royalty free, there are no -known- patent violations.
The exact same argument can be made for the BSD base Apple uses for OSX. It doesn't matter that BSD went through a long copyright case way back when; both because that case was about copyrights rather than patents, and because unknown patent violations can easily have crept into the code base since then. In fact, I can safely go out on a limb and guarantee that every non-trivial piece of software (including everything Apple has) is violating software patents. Software patents are handed out by the USPTO like Bibles are handed out in prison.
Apple's argument that they won't use Theora because of potential patent problems rings completely hollow. I'm not going to speculate on their motives, but the one they gave is nonsense.
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Theora is a bit different from Ogg in this respect. Theora is based on VP3, which was both patented and commercially distributed for a number of years. If VP3 had been infringing someone else's patents, then they would likely have sued back when a company was making money from it. The patents that were required to VP3 were released by On2 under a free, irrevocable, license and then (I believe) allowed to lapse.
Dirac is in a weaker position; it is believed to be patent free, but no one has done a patent search to make sure and it is not based on an existing codec.
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely - the notion of "submarine patents" rising up, should Theora take off, is not a new idea, and not specific to Apple. By mandating Theora in HTML5, you'd be risking the years of negotiations on the spec on the bet that there are no such patents - a bet I'd be surprised if any good Slashdot reader would take.
As others have pointed out, HTML has never mandated a specific image format reference in an IMG tag; a type of plugin referenced in OBJECT or EMBED; or the type of resource referenced in an A tag; it's outside it's scope. Let the standard focus on its scope, and let the market hash out the rest - it's not the end of the world to not have a single, mandated codec - in fact, I'd argue that having such a thing would unnecessarily limit our options - Theora is, to be kind, not the most efficient codec on the market; and the situation will likely only get worse. Don't hamstring HTML5 by hitching it to any particular codec.
Parent
Re:Apple's concern (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I hear 'royalty free' and I think of GIF, which was also royalty free... Until it wasn't. Which was an absolutely huge mess.
Honestly, if I were Apple and the Theora foundation offered a $100-per-million-device license saying basically 'we swear we are the sole authority on Ogg Theora, and you have a license from us to implement it to the spec' I'd be much happier than without it. Because then I'd have a set contract, spelling out the cost, and that if someone then comes along and says 'wait, we own this part of the spec, and you owe us $Xbillion' I could turn around to the Theora foundation and say 'Your breach of contract just cost me $Xbillion, and I expect you to pay that.' Basically, at that point the risk is Theora's, and not Apple's.
Apple is unwilling to take the risk that there are IP problems with the spec. It would take a lot of costly research and examinations for them to prove there aren't any, and there is no real benefit to them to spend the money and time. Translation: At free, it costs to much.
Parent
Apple does not seem to want to update QuickTime. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Simple (Score:4, Informative)
They don't know who to pay.
Parent
A solution: system codecs. (Score:5, Interesting)
How about making the browser use system (DirectShow on Windows, whatever-it's-called on Linux) codecs, so everybody could be using whatever codec they want. Look, a lot of media players on Windows (like WMP and MPC) use DirectShow, so thew users can install additional codecs.
Why they want to include the codecs in the browsers. This way is worse. If system codecs were used, then the sites could choose whether to use h.264, ogg or some other codec, like XviD.
Also, this way all of the patent/license/whatever issues for the browser vendors would go away. And if the users are watching video files on their computers they most likely have codecs already installed.
Re:A solution: system codecs. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right on a technical level, you really are. But wouldn't that make playing video on the web more like it was in the web 1.0 era? People would have to stay on top of codecs and go surf for these sorts of things. I believe flash won out originally because it was a seamless solution for the end users-- one plugin to rule them all.
Honestly, the solution you're suggesting is not unlike the way Silverlight/Moonlight handles media-- except that it does have a default/preferred codec.
Why, you could circumvent the lack of a video tag on IE (or anything else) by using the pluggable codec support in Silverlight 3 to provide a Theora codec. ;) And that won't require any proprietary tools and very little code- just (if the browser is IE, load the following silverlight control, point it to the codec and your theora video)
We might as well just keep using the object tag to embed media files and let the system figure out what's supposed to run it, if we're going to use system codecs. On Windows, WMP will do it, on Linux, mplayer (or gstreamer if the user is a sadomasochist), and on mac it will be Quicktime. I mean, it's progressive, in an absolutely regressive sort of way.
Parent
The real reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
Vendors never actually mean what they say. Here are the real reasons:
Apple won't support a codec that's incompatible with its huge installed base of ipods and iphones. They don't care about royalty fees because most Safari users pay for an OS X licence, and they want the free browsers to look sub-par compared with theirs.
Microsoft won't support a codec that makes the web more reliable for non-Windows users - especially Linux users. They don't care about royalty fees because all IE users pay for a WIndows licence, and they want the free browsers to look sub-par compared with theirs.
Google, Opera and Mozilla won't support anything that puts them at risk of needing to pay royalties on the huge number of free downloads they give away.
Nobody actually cares about end users or developers. If you think they do, you're kidding yourself.
Video For Everybody- a javascript free tag (Score:5, Informative)
You can still make use of the tag in a cross platform way. Video For Everybody [camendesign.com] Is a simple set of code that uses the video tag with only two input files - an ogg and an mp4 - and lets the tag work for, well, everyone. IE6? Check. Safari? Check. iPhone? Yep.
It falls back to whatever method works for playback - including using Flash to play the h.264 if it needs to.
It's pretty funny to see so many people bitching about Apple not supporting ogg when Microsoft ignores the tag altogether. Everyone, start supporting the video tag today as widespread use is the only way to get big companies to fully adopt it - perhaps that will motivate Apple to someday support ogg.
What HTML 5 should have been (Score:4, Insightful)
What we really need in HTML standarization:
Re:What HTML 5 should have been (Score:5, Informative)
Valid XML, all the time. Require that the tags balance, as in XHTML. This will make the document tree well-defined, which, at the moment, it is not. So all software that works on the DOM will behave consistently.
You're wrong. The document tree is well-defined in HTML 5. You don't need XML, you just need to follow the HTML spec. Of course, we can't force people to follow the spec, and the Web is currently full of non-conforming pages that include half-assed attempts at using bits and pieces of XHTML mixed with HTML. XHTML doesn't make anything better.
Errors put the browser in "dumb rendering" mode. Rather than a "best effort" approach, browsers should, upon detecting a serious error in the input, drop to "dumb mode" - default font, default colors, etc., after displaying an error message. Much of the incompatibility between browsers comes from inconsistent handling of bad HTML. So there should be a penalty, but not a fatal one, for bad code.
You're wrong. If your browser does this, users will use some other browser (regardless of whether it conforms to the HTML5 spec or not, because users don't care about that). You're right that broken code is a problem, but HTML5 addresses this by more clearly defining how broken code should be handled, so that all browsers can try to render even bad code in a consistent and compatible way.
No more upper code pages. The only valid character sets should be Unicode, or ASCII with HTML escapes. Chars above 127 in ASCII mode are to be rendered as a black dot or square. No more "Latin-1", or the pre-Unicode encodings of Han or Korean. So all pages will render in all browsers, provided only that they have some full Unicode font.
You're wrong. If you make a browser that doesn't support these other character sets, users will choose something else (see above). Of course everybody should be using UTF-8 these days, but we can't force them to.
Downloadable fonts. Netscape used to have downloadable fonts. The font makers bitched. Bring that feature back, despite the whining. No more having to express fonts as images.
It's back [alistapart.com], but in CSS, not HTML.
WebForms. Get the WebForms proposal back on track. Any needed processing for input should be do-able without Javascript.
HTML5 includes Web Forms 2.
2D layout The "div"/"clear" model of layout was a flop. Horrors of Javascript are needed just to make columns balance. Absolute positioning is overused as a workaround for the limits of "div"/"clear". (Text on top of text happens all too often.) Tables were actually a better layout tool, because they're a 2D system. HTML needs a 2D layout model that can't accidentally result in overlaps. There are plenty of those around; most window managers have one. There's been a quiet move back to tables for layout, but people are embarrassed to admit it.
CSS layout has some problems. Balanced columns is certainly one of them (although tables certainly doesn't fix that). They're working on it, but this can be addressed by improving CSS, outside of HTML.
Better parallelism. Pages must do their initial render without "document.write()". Forcing sequentiality during initial page load should be considered an error. This will make pages load faster. Some ad code will have to be rewritten.
I'm not sure what you're talking about exactly, but this sounds like a JavaScript implementation issue and not an HTML issue at all.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I find jus tthe opposite true.
Business users love obsolete software because its cheaper and what is the ROI for upgrading. Not to mention a larger IT staff is needed to support upgrades.
W2k and Office 2k live on and will continue to live for years to come.
Most users do not want to upgrade their computers as long as they work.
Open source evolves too quickly for users to be comfortable with. Until businesses ditch their proprietary obsolete software open source will never see the light of day.
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Fuck Apple too... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Fuck Apple too... (Score:4, Insightful)
What history?
The history of Apple proprietary hardware which they only recently (mostly) gave up?
The history of Apple suing clone makers out of existence?
The ongoing history of Apple locking iPhone users into their app store, dictating what apps are and are not acceptable, making exclusive agreements with a wireless carrier and enforcing said carrier's rules on what one can do with their connection even AFTER they have PAID FOR IT?
Hey.. I hate Microsoft but at least they don't care what CPU I run Windows on or what apps I run in Windows so long as I bought it per-seat!
And today we read about Apple playing their part in wrecking an effort to get an open standard for internet video. Looks like a continuation of history to me!
Parent
Re:Fuck Apple too... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, Apple has been releasing proprietary, non-upgradeable hardware, forcing their users to pay a premium for the hardware, then forcing an upgrade to the customer, causing them to buy all new hardware, for most of the company's history since the Mac was invented. Apple's Proprietary business deals have stagnated their platform several times, but their "creative marketing' has always managed to create enough fanboys to turn almost every Mac user into a smug elitist bastard who points the flaws out in everyone else's product except their own. Microsoft has also been making progress in that marketing strategy, but has yet to achieve Apple's market share in holier-than-thou egotistical bastards.
Meanwhile, we Linux/Ubuntu smug elitist bastards continue to point out flaws in everyone else's production, including our own, constantly taking the defeatist attitude that Linux is "not ready for the desktop" despite the fact that, at this point, it's easier to install than all competitors' products and easier to admin, maintain and upgrade than all competitors' products,
Parent
Re:Fuck Apple too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Fuck Apple too... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Fuck Apple, but why Java? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck you Microsoft. Die already!
Fuck you Adobe. Die already!
Fuck you Java. Die already!
Fuck you too Realnetworks. Just because.
Not "Just because". Fuck Real for producing crappy software that doesn't fit in anywhere at makes it annoyingly non-trivial to download things I want to watch.
Fuck Adobe for Flash. Seriously, I don't need vector graphics in my web browser. I'd love to have embedded .wmv/.avi/.mpeg files, whatever, because I can play those with mplayer which DOES NOT SUCK. As opposed to flash.
Fuck Microsoft for being the great browser market retardant. And in general for writing shitty software which doesn't do what I want it to (heck, I can't even get XP to install; epic fail).
And fuck Apple for being such control freaks. Well, first, fuck 'em for not helping fix this browser shit. Secondly, fuck them for being a worse control freak than Microsoft could ever be. I recently played with an iPhone (display/sales demo); among the top 25 apps in the store is one that displays scantily clad women, which are "as naked as Apple will let us get away with". FFS, Apple. Don't decide whether I'm going to watch porn on my phone. And you include a web browser---is that porn-filtered too? Assholes.
But don't fuck with Java. It's free software. It works for what it does: sorting algorithm animations and interactive Rubik's cube algorithm display. Java is OK, when used in moderation.
Flame on ;-)
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, Google is also refusing to switch YouTube to Ogg because of its lower quality per bitrate than h.264.
As was argued by the original author, you're left in a situation where if Ogg were specified in the standard, you'd have folks who followed the standard at a disadvantage in quality and/or bitrate.
Besides, W3C doesn't say which image file formats are allowable, why should it specify a codec?
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? YouTube rejecting Theora for quality issues? Have you been to YouTube recently? YouTube doesn't seem to give the slightest care about video quality.
Ignoring the tremendous improvements in the Thusnelda branch, if YouTube suddenly switched from severe H.26whatever overcompression to stock Theora with optimal settings (and everyone had libtheora and HTML 5 browsers), no one would notice the difference.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they are actually concerned about bandwidth (Theora will take more) and encoding time (Theora will take more (especially given presently available encoders)).
Parent
H.264 Theora: a demo (Score:5, Informative)
Ignoring the tremendous improvements in the Thusnelda branch, if YouTube suddenly switched from severe H.26whatever overcompression to stock Theora with optimal settings (and everyone had libtheora and HTML 5 browsers), no one would notice the difference.
Untrue. Xiph has made heroic progress with Theora, but it's still a decade-old codec design and bitstream, and it's hard to imagine it catching up with xvid, let alone a good H.264 implementation.
YouTube certainly has quality issues, but things can be bad in more than one way at a time. There's nothing that less efficient codec would help them with. Note their top bitrate is 1280x720p30 at 2 Mbps.
Some samples compared Xiph's latest demo clips, with the same source encoded with VC-1 and x264 are here:
http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/BBB%7C_Compare [live.com]
x264 can do 640x352 with higher per pixel-quality than Theora can do at 400x224 at the same bitrate.
Parent
Re:H.264 Theora: a demo (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, YouTube has three sets of settings:
Low bitrate H.263 + MP3
HQ bitrate H.264 + AAC-LC
HD bitrate H.264 + AAC-LC
The low bitrate, for whatever reason is keeping to the specs they've been using since launch, which are using the xvid implementation of old Sorenson Spark H.263 v1/MPEG-4 Part 2 Short Header. Maybe for device compatibility? Anyway, That's a codec about as old as the Theora bitstream, so we wouldn't expect it to be much better.
But I don't know that YouTube thinks it's "good enough" - they're offering higher quality modes, and that's what you get by default on the iPhone and other platforms. For whatever reason they're keeping around a legacy version, likely backwards comaptibility with some clients that don't do H.264 for whatever reason.
For the their high quality streams, Theora isn't competitive in quality. And for the highly compatible streams, Theora isn't competitive in compatibility.
So YouTube saying that Theora doesn't make sense for them makes sense to me. Therora doesn't an advantage in quality or compatibility for the streams they're doing.
Also, Big Buck Bunny isn't the best clip to extrapolate from, as it's really high quality lossless animation. To really see what YouTube needs to handle, try some lousy webcam, DV, and VOB rips. That's where H.264's in-loop deblocking filter give it a big advantage over other codecs, because it just gets smoother intead of blocky as the content gets more challenging.
Not to dismiss the excellent development work Xiph has done on Theora. The posts have been a fascinating read. But it's not plausible to me that anyone can make a business case for Theora over H.264, VC-1, or ASP licensing is available; the reduced bandwidth costs would be bigger than the actual real-world licensing fees for the real world examples I've thought of.
Theora's sweet spot would be in cases where MPEG-LA codec licenses simply aren't available for whatever reason. I imagine a fully refined Theora decoder would need fewer MIPS/pixel than H.264 High Profile, and perhaps even Baseline. But even in those cases, VC-1 Main Profile will probably offer similar performance with significantly better efficiency.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a really good point. I mean, I have no idea if it's true or not... maybe they do specify image file formats, I have no f*****g idea. But it certainly makes sense. The standard should define how web developers specify images, and how browsers should handle them, but the actual file formats are left up to the market to work out. Same thing with video... makes sense, right?
There are really only two significant video formats today for web streaming: Mpeg4/H.264 with MP3 or AAC audio is technically superior; Ogg/Theora with Vorbis audio is freer. (Though I guarantee you'll see trolls coming out of the woodwork with all sorts of wacky patent claims if Theora ever becomes really big.)
So, Apple will support one; Mozilla will support the other; Microsoft will support none; and VLC will release a super-duper ninja plugin that runs in any browser and supports both, plus 1001 other obscure formats for good measure. People will look around and see who's suing whom and how successfully, and eventually one or two formats will become so common that a browser developer would have to be stupid not to accept it -- the video equivalent of JPEG and GIF.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Informative)
There are really only two significant video formats today for web streaming: Mpeg4/H.264 with MP3 or AAC audio is technically superior; Ogg/Theora with Vorbis audio is freer.
Ogg use on the internet is a rounding error at best; RealMedia still gets more use (very popular in internet cafes in China for some reason).
The three primary media formats/codecs are MPEG-4 + H.264 (QuickTime, plus Flash and soon Silverlight 3 via progressive download), RTMPe + H.264 (Flash uses MPEG-4 files but a propritary protocol), and Windows Media + VC-1. Move Networks + VP7 (ala ABC.com) also pulls in million of eyeball/hours a month, certainly more than Ogg at this point.
I'd say Ogg is #5 at best today. #6 if you count torrents and hence MPEG-4 part 2.
As for Microsoft support, that's becoming pretty codec neutral. Silverlight 3 (currently in beta) supports both H.264 and has a Raw AV pipeline allowing arbitrary codecs in managed code to be added to any Silverlight player. So adding Theora/Vorbis or any other codec, format, and protocol can be done inside the Silverlight sandbox by any third party.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, Google is also refusing to switch YouTube to Ogg because of its lower quality per bitrate than h.264.
No, it is not. There has been no official statement from the YouTube team saying that. There's been one off-the-cuff statement to that effect by Chris DiBona, who is the open-source program manager at Google and does not work with YouTube (AFAICT). Subsequent requests for clarification failed to elicit any official statement. Peter Kasting of the Chrome team stated [whatwg.org]:
This is a quote from an actual Google employee, who incidentally happens to work on their browser and quite possibly knows their exact reasons for supporting both Theora and H.264.
Could people please stop spreading the misinformation that Google/YouTube believes that they can't use Theora because of its bitrate? It's completely unsubstantiated. Period.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
I say implement the tag, give the web developers what they want. Let them host the video in multiple formats and just serve up the appropriate one based on the detected browser or the user's preference (as many sites already do anyways). Ideally history would repeat itself and all the dominant browsers will eventually be able to handle all the major formats used with the tag.
Parent
Re:W3C doesn't say which image formats are allowed (Score:4, Informative)
From the HTML5 spec [w3.org]:
"This specification does not specify which image types are to be supported."
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Insightful)
The mention of Apple managed to spleen together two unrelated ideas: "expressing concerns over patents despite the fact that the codec can be used royalty-free."
There is no relationship between worrying about patent submarines and Ogg being royalty free. This is simple idiot-targeted editorializing. Apple doesn't want to be the deep pocketed commercial implementation of Ogg that ends up having to pay patent trolls. That's why it is going with the ISO/MPEG standard, which pools patents together from everyone. Mozilla doesn't want to use the standard because it is the opposite: penniless and non-commercial. Its entire business plan is based on pushing users to do Google searches as that $50M in search fees is its only source of income.
The only good news is that Apple owns the mobile web with the iPhone, so it can pretty much establish HTML5 itself and provide Flash-killer standards-based video without any help from Firefox.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that almost everyone without an iPhone can still access the web in much the sme ways as people with an iPhone.....right?? They use a web browser, of which there are many. One of the most popular being Opera Mini.
Parent
Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model (Score:5, Informative)
Opera mini isn't a web browser; it's a java-based image viewer displaying pre-rendered content from opera's caching proxies. It's designed for phones that can't handle a real web browser. Are you sure you want video with that?
If you look at actual mobile web usage [hitslink.com], iPhone/iPod touch is at 64%. Nobody else comes close, though Android (also webkit) will likely see an increased presence in the future.
Parent
Re:In other words, it's Apple-baw (Score:4, Informative)
Except it isn't just Apple blocking it. Nokia also sided against Ogg Theora, but then I guess that wouldn't be sensationalist enough for the /. crowd.
Neither is h.264 Apple's codec. apart from patents apples only other contribution was to give the MPEG group the MOV container for use as the MP4 container file format.
Parent