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H.264 has significantly better video quality

Wrong. Ogg Theora is nearly identical in quality to H.264. Both are a lot better than H.263. Judge for yourself: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

That's a joke if I've ever heard one. Theora doesn't COME CLOSE to h.264. The theora proponents always link to that same page, which is just BS, because if you actually WATCH the videos it's not hard to see that the theora encode looks FAR worse than the h.264 on practically every frame.

But maybe you are old and have feeble eyes. Here is another comparison where it should be much more obvious: http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ Notice how the theora version doesn't retain any detail at all?? Yea, that's some good quality video there.

And I have a hidden agenda? Yes, I will admit that I do indeed have an agenda. I like to see video that doesn't look like crap, so I advocate that people use the codecs that result in the highest quality video. And there is absolutely no better codec at the moment than the free and open source x264.

The link on xiph.org (http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html I'm guessing you mean) doesn't show that it's better than h264, it shows that it's better than h263, at a low bit rate. In the conclusions it freely admits that the h264 video is better quality.

Here's another comparison that clearly shows that both 1.1 and 1.0 are worse than h264 â" the x264 encoder used here is actually pretty old, and missing a couple of major improvements too.

Except that you tube uses a rather failtastic h264 encoder. This comparison seems to suggest that they really haven't been addressed. In fact, that 1.1 is worse than 1.0!

The version of x264 used here is even rather out of date, and misses a couple of major improvements.

A look at this comparison seems to suggest to me that 1.1 is actually worse than 1.0. Certainly it's no where near as good as x264 produced h264.

Now, if you want some screenshots of the "new and improved" Theora failing, here:

http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ [saintdevelopment.com]

Uh, that version is also six months old. We're talking about *new*, remember? Not last thanksgiving before any version of Thusnelda was even released.

First off, if you even spent 5 seconds reading the title on that page, you'd realize that it is a comparison between H.264 encoders and that the point I was making is that PSNR can't be trusted for anything.

Now, if you want some screenshots of the "new and improved" Theora failing, here:

http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ [saintdevelopment.com]

Notice how the "new" thungrewhatever build has somehow miraculously gotten worse than the old stable version. Also note that it is easily beaten by decades old formats like Xvid and even incomplete crap like Snow.

First off, if you even spent 5 seconds reading the title on that page, you'd realize that it is a comparison between H.264 encoders and that the point I was making is that PSNR can't be trusted for anything. Now, if you want some screenshots of the "new and improved" Theora failing, here: http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ [saintdevelopment.com] Notice how the "new" thungrewhatever build has somehow miraculously gotten worse than the old stable version. Also note that it is easily beaten by decades old formats like Xvid and even incomplete crap like Snow.

First off, if you even spent 5 seconds reading the title on that page, you'd realize that it is a comparison between H.264 encoders and that the point I was making is that PSNR can't be trusted for anything. Now, if you want some screenshots of the "new and improved" Theora failing, here: http://saintdevelopment.com/media/ [saintdevelopment.com] Notice how the "new" thungrewhatever build has somehow miraculously gotten worse than the old stable version. Also note that it is easily beaten by decades old formats like Xvid and even incomplete crap like Snow.

First off, if you even spent 5 seconds reading the title on that page, you'd realize that it is a comparison between H.264 encoders and that the point I was making is that PSNR can't be trusted for anything.

Now, if you want some screenshots of the "new and improved" Theora failing, here:

http://saintdevelopment.com/media/

Notice how the "new" thungrewhatever build has somehow miraculously gotten worse than the old stable version. Also note that it is easily beaten by decades old formats like Xvid and even incomplete crap like Snow.