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You mean like this?
Theora
H.264

Let me guess, you're viewing the videos with VLC?

You mean like this?
Theora
H.264

Let me guess, you're viewing the videos with VLC?

So before someone starts the whole "which codec is better" flamewar again: someone at xiph thinks theora is better, ars thinks h264 is better, and this guy has a do it yourself kit in the form of a shell script.

Have fun arguing, as the past few articles have been quite fruitful in that area. Sadly few have realized (despite it being the main focus of most of those articles, but hey, who reads those) that quality will not be the merit to win this battle.

"The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs."
They don't need to. Directshow and Quicktime are expendable. Microsoft doesn't need to support Theora.
Mozilla could just include these codecs in their installs.
http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
And for Mac
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
So it is an none problem
Next issue?

"The problem is that Quicktime and DirectShow don't support theora or vorbis by default, so hopefully Mozilla/Wikipedia/anyone else who cares can get them popular enough that Microsoft and Apple have to finally support some free codecs."
They don't need to. Directshow and Quicktime are expendable. Microsoft doesn't need to support Theora.
Mozilla could just include these codecs in their installs.
http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
And for Mac
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
So it is an none problem
Next issue?

Is that why YouTube encodes with shitty settings? I do believe they value CPU more then bandwith, otherwise they'd take advantage of the often cited superiority of H.264, instead of encoding at the same "horrible" quality that Theora provides.

Safari, Chrome, and Opera already have support for H.264. Internet Explorer 9 will have support for H.264.

Opera doesn't support H.264. It uses Ogg Theora. Chrome also supports Ogg Theora. Safari uses QuickTime for video playback, so if you install the XiphQT QuickTime components it also supports Ogg Theora. Internet Explorer 9 is probably using DirectShow for video playback, so if you install the Theora DirectShow filters Ogg Theora would likely work.

Safari, Chrome, and Opera already have support for H.264. Internet Explorer 9 will have support for H.264.

Opera doesn't support H.264. It uses Ogg Theora. Chrome also supports Ogg Theora. Safari uses QuickTime for video playback, so if you install the XiphQT QuickTime components it also supports Ogg Theora. Internet Explorer 9 is probably using DirectShow for video playback, so if you install the Theora DirectShow filters Ogg Theora would likely work.

As far as having a single standard for HTML5 video goes, Theora lost. H.264 is and has been already everywhere and on every device. I also suspect majority of sites will use H.264, as that's what is being used with Flash already.

It's not about Theora versus H.264. It's about open, royalty-free video versus closed, proprietary video. The formats and protocols the web is built on are open and royalty-free. With HTML5 there's no need for video to be any different. The arguments against Theora based on quality and bandwidth have been debunked time and time again. If YouTube switched to Theora tomorrow for new uploads, no one would notice the difference on the basis of quality or bandwidth.

As far as having a single standard for HTML5 video goes, Theora lost. H.264 is and has been already everywhere and on every device. I also suspect majority of sites will use H.264, as that's what is being used with Flash already.

It's not about Theora versus H.264. It's about open, royalty-free video versus closed, proprietary video. The formats and protocols the web is built on are open and royalty-free. With HTML5 there's no need for video to be any different. The arguments against Theora based on quality and bandwidth have been debunked time and time again. If YouTube switched to Theora tomorrow for new uploads, no one would notice the difference on the basis of quality or bandwidth.

Can you please name what are those technical problems if you know what you're babbling? Those comparing Theora and H.264 do not consider H.264 has profiles, however theora is a single profile. Theora is not for high bit rate applications as in Blue-ray (although in high bitrates difference in human observable visual artefacts approach to zero), but it's very well suitable for web based streaming and content. What people complain about Theora is not 'technical' problems, just 'implementation' problems. Theora as a nature needs less calculation while decoding and encoding. If you add same kind of overhead of h.264 to theora, there's nothing that could be worse than h.264 for same bitrates. Theora encoders will be only better if adoption is higher and more manpower behind the implementation. Moreover on simple profile that web is supposed to use for H.264 has even technical shortcomings that Theora does not have.

Check answer of Greg Maxwell as a reply to similar FUD that Chris diBona tried to spread if you want to see it with your own eyes.

It's of course H.264 but for different reasons - Windows 7 has build-in support for H.264, and Theora kind of lost the war already.

No, it isn't "of course" H.264. The author of the Technologizer article doesn't have a good understanding of the situation. From the article:

"The HTML5 situation remains murky: Video needs to be compressed using a particular codec, and Safari and Chrome support H.264 while Firefox and Opera use the open-source Ogg Theora standard. (That’s why YouTube’s experimental HTML5 version works only in the Apple and Google browsers–YouTube opted for H.264, not Theora.) Microsoft representatives told me that IE9 will be part of the H.264 camp."

Chrome supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora out of the box. Safari uses the QuickTime framework to play back video and so by extension it supports Ogg Theora if the XiphQT QuickTime components are installed. It seems unlikely to me that IE9 wouldn't use the DirectShow framework to play back video. If that's the case, then IE9 will also support Ogg Theora if the DirectShow filters are installed.

When it comes to HTML5 video today, Theora is the only video codec that can reach all four major browsers. I'd speculate that will continue to be the case with IE9.

If (perhaps when) Google releases VP8 as an open, royalty free codec there will be more royalty free options available. Ultimately, only royalty free formats are worth pursuing for the web. As you say, both Flash and H.264 are closed are proprietary and thus diametrically opposed to the open web.

It's of course H.264 but for different reasons - Windows 7 has build-in support for H.264, and Theora kind of lost the war already.

No, it isn't "of course" H.264. The author of the Technologizer article doesn't have a good understanding of the situation. From the article:

"The HTML5 situation remains murky: Video needs to be compressed using a particular codec, and Safari and Chrome support H.264 while Firefox and Opera use the open-source Ogg Theora standard. (That’s why YouTube’s experimental HTML5 version works only in the Apple and Google browsers–YouTube opted for H.264, not Theora.) Microsoft representatives told me that IE9 will be part of the H.264 camp."

Chrome supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora out of the box. Safari uses the QuickTime framework to play back video and so by extension it supports Ogg Theora if the XiphQT QuickTime components are installed. It seems unlikely to me that IE9 wouldn't use the DirectShow framework to play back video. If that's the case, then IE9 will also support Ogg Theora if the DirectShow filters are installed.

When it comes to HTML5 video today, Theora is the only video codec that can reach all four major browsers. I'd speculate that will continue to be the case with IE9.

If (perhaps when) Google releases VP8 as an open, royalty free codec there will be more royalty free options available. Ultimately, only royalty free formats are worth pursuing for the web. As you say, both Flash and H.264 are closed are proprietary and thus diametrically opposed to the open web.

Ogg has almost no commercial support.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band series are among the many video games that use Ogg Vorbis audio.

Well, this is not exactly true...For my eyes Theora+OGG encoded in 327kbps is much better than H264 encoded with the same bitrate: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Apple supports Theora in exactly the same way Firefox (in theory, I think) supports H.264. Plugins.

Download and install the XiphQT components, and HTML5 ogg/vorbis/theora video will play perfectly in Safari. If the installation doesn't seem user-friendly enough to you (involves dragging and dropping to a system folder), I imagine anyone could package up a neater, easier-to-use version if there was motivation.

If Apple really had our best interests at heart, they would be either 1) pushing Ogg Theora as a baseline video standard, or 2) working to release H.264 into the public domain so that everyone can use the arguably "better" codec.

Every piece of Apple hardware that can play video supports H.264 which is also what they provide in their iTunes store. They can't change that overnight. Furthermore they'd need to support H.264 anyway since Youtube uses it. Apple can't release H.264 into the public domain, because they don't own it.

In fact, speaking of an unencumbered codec, have you noticed that Safari, by deliberate choice, does not support Ogg Theora?

Safari, at least on the Mac, supports everything the Quicktime framework supports. While they have been shipping H.264 support with Qicktime for years they are not preventing you from installing a plugin if you want to watch Theora videos in HTML5.

Firefox, of course supports Ogg Theora, and due to its open source nature, can't support H.264 unless it's released to the public domain.

Firefox could easily support H.264 if they used the codec framework the operating systems provide. There are free (as in beer/licensed and as in freedom) H.264 decoders that you can download for DirectShow and Qicktime. The situation with GStreamer isn't that good, but since Fluendo provides a free and legal MP3 decoder for linux I'm sure it wouldn't be so hard for someone with the resources (for instance Mozilla and Opera) to get together and provide the same thing for H.264. Realistically it wouldn't be a problem though since most people have the GStreamer Bad and Ugly plugins installed anyway.
Another thing Firefox could do is to use FFMpeg for Vorbis and Theora decoding. That way it would be trivial for the user to replace a stripped FFMpeg with a full featured one and play basically every video on the web.

Lots of casual games (from Awem, Big Fish Games, etc.) make use of ogg+vorbis for audio.

Also:
      http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora
      http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Vorbis -- lots more games using vorbis than theora

Lots of casual games (from Awem, Big Fish Games, etc.) make use of ogg+vorbis for audio.

Also:
      http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora
      http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Vorbis -- lots more games using vorbis than theora

Please, read again what I said about YouTube videos being intentionally encoded with lower settings for better decoding speed. Or if you don't believe me, download that YT clip from comparison you refer to, open it in MediaInfo and see codec parameters.
This is freaking Baseline profile! It does not even use B-frames not to mention more advanced features like CABAC, new modes of motion prediction or B-pyramid.
All this 'comparison' proves is that you really need to cripple h264 for newest and greatest version of Theora to match.

Now let's see what Theora supports: http://wiki.xiph.org/Theora . Oh my, not even B-frames are supported. Hello guys, 90s called and want their codec back.

A direct comparison has been made between what YouTube does now with H.264 video versus what YouTube could do now with Ogg Theora video. The conclusion is that YouTube could achieve a similar level of quality at a similar bitrate with Ogg Theora as they do with H.264.

Complaining that they didn't make a different comparison is remarkably silly.

The two issues that prevented YouTube from using the Ogg Theora codec still apply.

Many hardware devices already have H.264 decoding built into the chip, ranging from set-top boxes to the iPhone. Moving away would mean losing ability to run on these target devices (or run at an unacceptable frame rate).

Yes, but going by that logic there won't be an H.265 either, because the hardware support doesn't exist in current devices.

According to this wiki page: http://wiki.xiph.org/Theora_Hardware there are 3 devices that support Theora decoding. H.264 hardware decoders are included a huge number of things. If H.264 had been chosen as the HTML5 video codec, it would have been trivially easy to implement playback on a huge number of devices, from the original iPhone to a huge number of computers with H.264 hardware decoders but slow CPUs. If H.264 had been chosen, HTML5 video would have hit the ground running and got alot of support behind it. If Theora had been chosen, it would take 1-2 years for devices to add in compatibility. I'm all for open source and royalty free licensing, but it's pretty hard to compete with H.264. A new codec isn't going to help things either.

Now let's see what Theora supports: http://wiki.xiph.org/Theora . Oh my, not even B-frames are supported. Hello guys, 90s called and want their codec back.

Theora is dead end. No matter how much tweaking they have done in Thusnelda it simply cannot change the fact that h264 is at least generation ahead.

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.

It doesn't look "far worse". It may be a problem with your player software. Try watching the Theora encoded video in Firefox.

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.

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

will be free until at least 2015, and I'm willing to bet it will continue to be free after that.

If there are no alternatives, I'm sure H.264 will not remain free. Once everyone is hooked, why on Earth wouldn't the owners start charging money for it? Because they're such nice people? LOL. If they have no plans to start charging for it, why don't they make it free forever, starting now? Since they have not done so, obviously they are hoping they can eventually charge money for it.

The war is already over

Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already. The fact you feel you have to make a proclamation suggests you're not sure yourself, or that you have a hidden agenda. You say it's everywhere, and that's why it has already won. It's not nearly as widespread as you seem to think. Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

I've got Theora on my Mac.

http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/

If I EVER ran across that format, I'd install it.

Oh, but I could have so many nice animated ads if I didn't use ClickToFlash.

You're missing a third requirement -- that it be a better codec.

The claim that Ogg Theora is inferior is a myth. The quality of video is virtually identical, and in some circumstances (low bitrates), the quality of Ogg Theora is, in my humble opinion, actually better.

Imagine for a moment that PNG had been the proprietary format, and only JPEG had been open. Would you really have advocated JPEG?

I thought I made myself clear. Yes, I unequivocally would. That's not to say that I would have advocated that browsers not implement PNG; the more formats your browser supports, the better, as far as I'm concerned, and if you're willing and able to pony up the licensing fees, bully for you. But had a browser deliberately chosen not to implement JPEG-encoded files, then yeah, that would tweak me off.

The iphone's hardware decoder can only play a fairly limited subset of h264. Same thing for most other hardware decoders. The subset makes h264 just as weak as Theora, a fact the Xiph people quietly exploited in their comparison with youtube.

Sorry to say this, but This just isn't true. Ogg/Theora holds up quite competitively against H.264, demonstrably, TODAY. I don't know why this FUD gets spread around, but having the Internet move to H.264 as a "standard" is akin to shooting ourselves in the collective foot.

Ogg/Theora is here today, it's competitive with H.264, and isn't encumbered like H.264. The extension of "free" is just MPG group trying to submarine it into widespread use before they come in with terms. I swear, sometimes, we all live with the battered wife "Stockholm" syndrome. We've seen this before, and we're about to get it again.

You know, Theora video doesn't suck.

<sarcasm>

Oh boy oh boy, a comparison on xiph.org. I'm sure that this will be unbiased in any way. From the conclusion:

The primary challenge is that all files at these rates will have problems, so the reviewer is often forced to decide which of two entirely distinct flaws is worse. Sometimes people come to different conclusions. That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion.

I'm totally convinced with such strong arguments. He's clearly gone his way to show flaws in both codecs, instead of just encoding a video with two codecs and letting the audience decide.

</sarcasm>

Yes, yes, I know there's $obscure_bad_interface_linux_based_device that supports Theora and Ogg.

Go to the nearest electric/computer parts shop.
Go to the shelf where all the multimedia player/harddisk enclosure are. You know : black box, you buy one, optionally slap a harddrive into it, optionally plug an ethernet cable and put it under the TV set (Kiss, Tvix, etc.).

Chance are :
- almost all of them will run some (hidden and un-advertised) Linux kernel under the hood.
- almost all of them will support Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (not always advertised)
- a huge proportion can do software Theora decoding (Theora is an older and much simplier codec. It requires less resources than H264 and can be done in software or DSP/SIMD assisted software). It's not always advertised, it might only come in a firmware upgrade. But lot's have it.
- not all of them will have painfully ugly interfaces

So the situation is a bit more easy than "there's one single model which plays it". Lots of asian noname devices manufacturer are implementing it, because it comes for free and because they can thus add an additional bullet point to the feature list.

Want hardware support ?
- There exist open theora core.

Don't want to make a custom chip ?
- There also exist a GPGPU implementation.
Given that ARM and both PowerVR (maker of the GPU core on the hyper-popular OMAP chipsets) and nVidia (maker of the GPU core on the upcoming Tegra) are members of the OpenCL committee, you can expect that hardware accelerated OpenCL-written video codecs will be the solution for lots of future devices.

The situations is similar as with Ogg Vorbis a few years before :
- it's doable.
- big brand doesn't do it, yet. because their lasy.
- noname brand are starting to pick it up. after a couple of years it will have a huge market share among the brandless device, to the point that anything except Apple's device can play it.

You know, Theora video doesn't suck.

And even if it sucked, that wouldn't matter anyway :
most of video today consist of short snips on social websites of dancing cats filmed with a camera phone with crappy sensors and low quality MJPEG compression.

Arguing that Theora would need more bits to achieve the same quality as other codec is akin to arguing that Youtube should spend more bits to be better faithful to all the compression artifacts.
Theora opponents say that, for the same bits bandwidth, Theora video is blurrier. I'm saying that this blur won't hide any critical detail. It will only blur out the noise from the camera phone's crappy sensor and from the MJPEG'S 50% compression. I personally *can* live without them, if it is what it takes to have a open free/libre standard.

You know, Theora video doesn't suck.

If you only put Theora videos on your site, they won't be viewable in Safari (using default Quicktime components), iPhone or Android.

If you install the Xiph Quicktime components you will be able to view them in Safari. Supporting locked platforms like the iPhone, Android, or WebOS is a matter of your personal ethics. I personally file it in the same bin as supporting software patents myself.

All of the bitching about the patent/royalty situation ignores the following facts:

• H.264 is hardware accelerated on nearly every platform, desktop and mobile - Ogg is not.

This is a "chicken Vs egg" problem. There are hardware decoders for Theora out there and the only thing that stops you from getting hardware support for a format is the OEM's decision to add it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ogg produces inferior video at the same bitrate as H.264, or larger video for the same quality.

Sorry, back here in reality Theora's quality is at least on par with H.264 with the same size. But thanks for your attempt at FUD, though.

YouTube, DailyMotion, and Vimeo have spoken in favor of H.264. Watch the dominoes topple.

How exactly do "dominoes topple" if not only they can easily support Theora but also it is a very easy way to avoid licensing costs? Support for H.264 is not free, you know? Didn't you even read the part in the summary that reads "the current fee exemption for free-to-the-viewer internet delivery is only in effect until the end of 2010."?

There are two alternatives here - Flash-based video and H.264. Don't kid yourself that Ogg is a third, because it's not going to happen. Time for Mozilla to face reality and pay up the license as Apple and Google have done. Otherwise, watch Chrome really destroy Firefox.

Just because you try to repeat "Theora isn't an option" as a mantra of sorts it doesn't mean that it's anything remotely close to true. There is a whole world out there that happens to enjoy watching videos online and no one in their right mind wishes to start paying money to keep doing that, neither the video providers nor the audience. So please pick up your poorly conceived FUD and go waste it elsewhere.

From 2007? How about something a bit more recent?

I think you meant Theora, as Vorbis is an audio codec. Or maybe you'd like to go watch some MP3 videos.

How many times does this link need to be posted for people to stop the Theora/Vorbis FUD? http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Someone posted this in the previous H.264 versus Ogg story, which gives a data point including screenshots pointing to ogg being better: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Keep in mind that a difference of 4 dB would mean that you need about twice the bitrate for the same quality.

Pretty strong evidence here that this assertion is incorrect in real-world tests:

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Being a codec snob is trendy.

The reality of it is much less exciting.

Youtube already supports several versions of the files, they could probably drop the flash 7 compatibility in exchange for Theora. In terms of numbers of client Ogg/Theora for firefox is probably a better deal than flash 7. Adding one more to a half dozen isn't a tripling.

Old technology? Since when is technology's age any relevant to it's value? Electricity was discovered centuries ago and we still rely on it up to this day. Do you believe that just because it's old technology it should be simply be abandoned without any relevant and rational reason to justify it?

And for your information, Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality. So, that's also not it.

Regarding that "hardware accelerated" bit, do you know what it takes for a codec do be "hardware accelerated"? It only takes the will of the manufacturer to offer hardware support for a specific format. The h.264 codec isn't magical nor is the Theora codec cursed. In fact there are Theora hardware decoders in the market already.

So please refrain from spewing ignorance and/or FUD. Theora may eventually stumble on relevant shortcomings but hard

1 - you say "triple" then you say its in fact only double
2 - you justify your source as "i heard so" which discard the source altogether

but wait theres more
"Another licensing issue that is often overlooked is the ambiguity of MPEG LA's future patent royalty collection plans. MPEG LA has established broadcast fees that licensees will be required to pay for distributing free (or ad-supported) streaming video content on the Internet. These fees will not be instated until the end of 2010, when the second H.264 licensing period goes into effect. The language used in the current license treats Internet streaming just like over-the-air television, implying that the licensees will have to pay broadcast fees per-region. That could prove to be extremely costly for Internet video providers who make their content available around the world." *

and:
http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

what can yo usee on the above link? theora has same if not greater quality as youtube has with h264 and h263 (theora is much better than h263 low bandwidth, and similar to h264 in high bandwidth)

*http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars (look, real source link)

thanks for the FUD, tho.

From what I've seen, and I did look into the matter a great deal, mp3 decoding (playing) hasn't really been an issue, either because Franhougher (I don't remember how to spell it) doesn't bother to sue anyone who makes software mp3 players or their claimed patent on it doesn't exist / isn't valid.

The problem is with mp3 encoders. Sometime around the late 1990s the company started suing open source developers until they stopped making any encoders. The only project which survived was GNU Lame, but apparently only because they had the legal backing and they declared their program for "educational and research" purposes.

This is why Ogg Vorbis gained traction. Open source developers didn't have to worry about being sued when using this format. Also note mpeg 4 video may have similar problems. The group which handles licensing (I believe called MPEG-LA) has repeatedly said they want to charge per file created, not just per encoder.

It could get really expensive if they decide to do this. This is also why Ogg Theora is important. Not necessarily to get everyone to use it, but for an alternative in case you can't afford or don't want to pay license fees. Some video game companies use ogg vorbis because there is some high flat fee for the license of games. I think it was $30,000(US)/game when I checked. Not a small amount at any rate.

If you need to encode for your mp3 devices, from what I understand (IANAL) the patent for mpeg layer 2 has run out, so you don't have to worry about royalties. The project toolame encodes layer 2. I know it is on debian and the source should be easy to find. It is older codec, so doesn't compress as well.

But then from my observations in sound and compression, mp3s are inferior to ogg vorbis. mp3 is just used because every device supports it and everyone is used to it. Some company (same one?) came out with a "mp3 pro" format, but no one used it and no one cared. Probably for the same reason as vorbis, but also because it required licensing fees as well.

So I am not really sure anyone will notice or care about any issues with layer 2 anyway. I notice a little, but only because I try to get my files really small (below 64kbps if possible)

in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.

True, but then so could the browser. Yet there really haven't been problems with people going to mozilla.com or getfirefox.com and worrying about whether they are getting the real Firefox and not a trojaned browser

Because Firefox is a well-known brand, people know that the software from getfirefox.com is trustworthy. The Ogg brands are not as famous, and people won't be able to tell the page hosting the official Theora installer for Windows from an equally polished site carrying a trojaned codec.

If the plugin is Open Source (GPL or BSD license or similar) then there's probably no reason that it can't just be included with the browser to eliminate this problem.

YouTube, a U.S. based web site, uses H.264 video. The standard patent license for H.264 in the United States is incompatible with licenses meeting the Open Source Definition.

Maybe you mixed it with some video codecs such as Dirac?

Just FYI, there's the Theora video codec which is also used with the Ogg container, as well as the Speex audio codec aimed at low-bitrate encoding of speech. FLAC is also occasionally muxed into an Ogg container.

Xiph.org nowadays recommends .oga for audio, .ogv for video and so on (see http://wiki.xiph.org/MIMETypesCodecs), but it's true that .ogg is probably still by far the most commonly used extension with Ogg/Vorbis, with many portable players supporting the format but not recognizing the newer recommendations etc. Having the same extension for both just audio and muxed video/audio is a bit icky from the end user's point ot view, so maybe some day the newer recommendations will be more commonly followed.

Why would 1.1 be worse than 1.0? Such senseless results are usually an indication that the people who conducted the benchmarks did something wrong.

In that particular case it seems they've been testing a theora built from theora's svn revision r15534, whereas the current revision is 16583 http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/theora/

This benchmark seems outdated.

This page seems to say they have been addressed : http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Most media devices with music playback abilities do not have the function to play ogg (or flac for that matter).

nope, there are dozens of devices, including portables, that play vorbis, and dozens that play flac. flac is particularly cheap to decode. a partial list:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers

OGG is faster when it runs a floating point decode, but it has an integer decode engine (tremor http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/) that will run on anything fast enough to keep with the bitrate you are using.

In sites like Youtube, h264 will prevail. And this time, h264 is the (much) better tech as well.
To get the same quality as h264 video, Theora video needs higher bit rates, which translates to higher traffic, and in the end costs more money.

YouTube uses only a subset of h.264. This is likely due to the fact that they want to be able to take advantage of hardware acceleration on mobile devices, and using h.264 to its fullest potential would make most computers, especially mobile devices, use just too much processing power, often more than is available. It also takes longer to encode such streams, which would be less efficient for YouTube.
.
So, what you should be asking yourself is whether YouTube's h.264 is more efficient than Theora. The answer is: no. At the same bitrates, Theora looks just fine, thank you--and it's only going to get better.