Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs

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>."

Comments

Re:Why do the vendors have a say?

[sakdoctor]

Who cares what apple, google and opera think anyway. They have tiny browser shares.
Microsoft can simply be trusted to do the wrong thing. Whatever is worst for everyone but themselves.
That leaves firefox who have the largest consolidated browser share, (IE 6, 7 and 8 are so wildly incompatible they are best treated as 3 separate competing browsers).

Mozilla. Do the right thing!

Re:Apple?

[Duradin]

Royalty-free doesn't mean the patents won't cause problems down the line.

You can get GPL stuff royalty free but it can royally hose you over in its interactions with other licenses or agreements.

Re:Apple?

[funkatron]

ffs. Just trash the patent system and shut the fuck up.

Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model

[ArsonSmith]

you must be using an open source spelling and grammar checker.

Re:Things to learn from the Open Source model

[Jesus_666]

Yeah, but why should Flash die? Flash video is still going strong - requires some users to install a third party plugin, just lke Flash. Flash requires you to code a player but those are easily available. Plus, Microsoft hasn't committed to anyway so Flash is actually the safer bet.

Re:Why do the vendors have a say?

[smoker2]

No, because it is the only free and legal option open to all users and manufacturers. No one's saying it should ONLY be Theora, but as a base implementation, Theora should be specified. They can then add H264 or whatever as well if they wish, but for those who cannot use H264, Theora is a fallback available so that they can meet the standard. What good is a standard if you automatically prevent certain manufacturers from meeting it ? Oh that's right, it's not about creating a standard, it's about protecting someones IP and profits.

Re:H.264 Theora: a demo

[Daniel Phillips]

You sure do put a lot of energy into slagging Ogg, and you consistently neglect mention the advantage Ogg has over H.264: it is unencumbered by patents and therefore free for anybody to encode and/or play, on any hardware they wish.

I for one, am perfectly happy to burn a little extra bandwidth for that, and anyway I not buy your assertion that Ogg cannot close the bandwidth gap over time. After all, you are a Microsoftie with a vested interest in keeping video proprietary.