Slashdot Mirror
Examining the HTML 5 Video Codec Debate
Ars Technica has a great breakdown of the codec debate for the HTML 5 video element. Support for the new video element seems to be split into two main camps, Ogg Theora and H.264, and the inability to find a solution has HTML 5 spec editor Ian Hickson throwing in the towel. "Hickson outlined the positions of each major browser vendor and explained how the present impasse will influence the HTML 5 standard. Apple and Google favor H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favor Ogg Theora. Google intends to ship its browser with support for both codecs, which means that Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions, both in public and privately, on the situation regarding codecs for and in HTML5, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' Hickson wrote. 'I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined.'"
and let the content providers decide.
The Internet Book Database
"Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg"
Except IE, which doesn't support, and has not announced plans to support, anything. Until they decide what they're going to do, it really doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.
Apple and Google favor H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favor Ogg Theora.
Right, while convenient, that doesn't strike me as a very comprehensive list of "major browser vendors".
sic transit gloria mundi
They could have simply specified that a browser must support ONE of the two options, h.264 or Theora. This would have at least provided a reference to websites, such that they can guarantee that they need support no more than two codecs. Without a standard, they can't necessarily guarantee that a browser will support either. A third party browser may come by and decide to implement nothing but MJPEG since it isn't specified.
I mean, there are legitimate concerns in both camps. Theora's hardware support is non-existent, and h.264 has expensive licensing fees. So why not allow browser manufactuerers to pick the one that best suits their position, rather than leaving it undefined entirely?
A guarantee of at least one of two being supported is better than no guarantee at all.
The best reason I have seen so far as to why Apple/Google favor H.264 is because their current products have H.264 hardware encoders in them. Switching to ogg/theora would hit battery life hard in these devices since it would have to be done in software. While I agree that its a selfish reason, its a reason better then "cause we want it". I would really like to see Theora succeed though, an open standard for web would be a beautiful thing
So put that in your pipe and grep it
Really? Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used? Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Perhaps someone on the Xiph board did something to one of Apple's Media guys when they were kids or something?
Apple simply does not like free codecs because if customers are allowed to use them, then the corporation loses some control over the customers. That's the reason why people should refuse to buy anything from Apple and other companies with similar attitude towards their customers.
Inferior standard. Judging from HTML4, by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today so alleged superiority buys us very little, there'll still be a time where people interested in performance ignore the standard altogether. On the other hand, H.264's patent concerns will be with us for the next ~20 years, so Theora's advantage in ease of implementation will likely hold up for a much longer time.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Regardless of why they have some hatred for Xiph who cares what Apple's doing? Just specify Ogg. Apple will either lose market share as people switch to a browser that doesn't suck or they'll cave and use Ogg. If you can get 3 of them to agree I'd say that's pretty good. Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing? Let's just rename Apple to "Microsoft" and call it a day.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles. We make the sites and we tell people what browser to use. FireFox didn't install itself on grandma's computer - that was us.
Why the false dichotomy? The market had already voted long before W3C threw in the towel. Apple wasn't going to budge simply because its hardware platform was geared for h.264. It would render the hardware obsolete because now you have to run a software decoder for Theora, sapping the battery for processing that a dedicated, low power h.264 chip already does.
The problem with the 'open standard' is not necessarily its inferiority, per se, but its complete, utter lack of general market acceptance.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Regardless of why they have some hatred for Xiph who cares what Apple's doing?
Ipod and iPhone owners care. Content providers looking to target iPod and iPhone owners care.
Apple will either lose market share as people switch to a browser that doesn't suck or they'll cave and use Ogg.
You're oversimplifying. This about more than just Web browsers. It is also about content services. When you don't have Google's Youtube on board with Ogg and you don't have iTunes on board with Ogg and it won't play on iPhones or iPods and you have little likelihood of that changing, specifying Ogg in the spec results in the spec not gaining widespread implementation and failing.
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles.
I'd say the content providers have as much or more influence than browser developers. If the video element is implemented in a way content providers like iTunes and YouTube are not happy with, then it will be ignored by them and we''ll be stuck without any progress and a Web still locked into a fragmented mix and dominated by Flash video and Silverlight.
Apple uses open standards in their MobileMe / .Mac implementation. They also write standards-based server components, like CalDAV. Their platforms' preferred 3d library is OpenGL, another open standard.
Clearly they support many open standards, so it's not just about control over their customers.
Developers: We can use your help.
The market has already decided. But it wasn't decided because of software, it was decided on hardware. Theora does not have a dedicated hardware decoder that hardware makers can pull off the shelf and incorporate into their devices. h.264 does. And, when you take into consideration the sheer number of devices that have that chip installed (virtually every 5th generation iPod and forward from Apple) it becomes very easy to tell that h.264 was going to be the winner.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
All I can say is "Fuck Apple".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles. We make the sites and we tell people what browser to use.
Woah woah woah. That's a huge misconception that needs to be squashed right now: We, the content providers, do not tell the customer what browser to use; rather, the customer tells us what browser they're willing to use to view our content.
Why do you think so many "IE6 approved" sites still exist? Because those website's operators desperately want people to continue using IE6? No, they do it because a very large number of people are still using IE6 and are going to continue using IE6 regardless of what browser we mighty developers to try "force" others to use.
As someone else pointed out above, the problem with trying to hardball Apple into playing nice is that Apple will just sit and wait. When website developers go to create their sites and try to ensure cross-browser compatibility, their response to the problem will NOT be "Oh, Apple is just being douchebags. I'll just not bother supporting Safari until they support Theora." Instead, what they'll probably say is, "Hey, flash videos work in every browser. Why should I bother using this stupid VIDEO tag?"
and a poster child against software patents. It's *very* expensive for small players, it's incompatible with free media, the terms are almost impossible to comprehend (or at least you need several "IP" lawyers on staff), plus you aren't even assured that you won't be sued in Texas by some scum sucking, syphillitic pus-drinking, rotting corpse-devouring and worm-infested defecation-eating patent troll.
The fact that it's open source or royalty free doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once Apple or Microsoft use it.
Likewise, simply because the MPEG LA controls the licensing of KNOWN patents for H.264 doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once it gets adopted as a standard.
There is also no assurance that the MPEG LA won't try to monetize their position as the sole licensing authority for H.264 if it were to be adopted into the standard. Unisys anyone?
So Apple's case would only be plausible if they can show that there is any reason to believe that the software-patent-related risk is higher for Theora than H.264, and they have not done that.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Unless there is a miracle and Software Patents are deemed illegal, Firefox will never support H.264. Being tri-licensed at least the GPL/LGPL would prevent Mozilla from licensing H.264.
How can free software have a strategy for hardware at all? It's free software, not free hardware.
Again, this isn't just free software that licensing this will damage. End users will pay the price for licensing. It's not free; not even freeware.
And no, "free software" as a collective is not going in one direction. When the hell has any one type of software ever done that? Is "propietary software" going in one direction, too? Sure, parts have objectives - Gnome is going their pretty nifty Gnome Shell (which has no "me too" in it, I can assure you) and KDE is simply interested in polishing what they've got so far. The Linux kernel is working out filesystems and making things faster, all the while adding drivers. As a collective, these projects are making progress, but not in any distinct fashion. But then again, are all of the programs installed on the average Windows box also cohesively working as a team? I dare say not. You have a double standard for free software because you lump them together as if they should be a team, which is ludicrous at best.
The key here is that pretty much everyone else is either going to be neutral on the codecs or is going to be seeking the least encumbered. If Apple wants to cripple its products, then I say "Fuck them". Apple is rapidly taking Microsoft's place as being the most pernicious abuser of vendor lock-in ploys. I could care less whether those poor little iPhone and Safari fanbois can't watch online videos because Steve Jobs and his pack of well-trained corporate trolls somehow think that trying to ignore open standards is a worthwhile pursuit. There is enough penetration by players like Google and Mozilla now that I think giving a bunch of worthless assholes like Steve Jobs and Co. the one-fingered salute can probably fly. It ain't 1985 any more, and those retards at Apple will either wake up to it, or find, once more, they're taking good hardware and marginalizing it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.