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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.'"
I would rather see use of a format that is licensed from an independent body like H.264 is rather than a format that either requires use of GPL'ed or LGPL'ed code because the published spec is either non-existent or not up to date.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Ehm Theora is not an 'open standard' by any means. H.264 actually is, but it has some serious licensing issues for 'free software' which is not a problem for Apple since they are already paying for the licenses anyway. Implementing Theora is risky for Apple, and I'm pretty surprised that Google is willing to add it to Chrome. No-one can guarantee that Theora is patent-free, having a codebase in a larger project which isn't covered by any patents at all has become almost impossible, certainly if you specialize in areas like video and audio codecs, where commercial labs such as Fraunhofer Institute operate, which live from patent royalties on technologies they researched. I'm not exactly what you can call an Apple fanboy, I do have an iPhone however, but have no mac, typing this on a HP laptop with winxp, running 3 linux vm's, and developing on a bsd and a linux server remotely. I always get confused when people talk about Apple being "evil". Sure their focus is not on 'standards' - but on user experience. I absolutely don't get the 'lock in'. Apple pushed for DRM-free tunes in the iTunes store - because it's bad for the customers, not because it conflicts with some idealistic bullshit. I don't really get how behavior like this is lock-in? This means anything that can play AAC files - which is quite a lot (AAC is standardized after all and not an Apple propriatry format). This opens the market for competition for their iPod, so explain me exactly where the lock-in is? And that's only one part. Apple clearly supports opensource software. Yes they struggled somewhat with giving back to webkit in the beginning, but now, things are looking fine on that level. They get it that they can benefit from OSS, and they do include a lot of OOS with OS/X ( like Apache etc). Some people say they are exploiting OSS projects, but in the end, Red Hat, Novell & co. are also doing that right? Now - can someone please explain me how Apple would "lock me in" by refusing to implement a non-standardized video-codec of which the creators claim it is patent-free. They do want to implement a codec that most video-capable devices out-there can already play, and is still the standard to which Theora is being compared. Please shut up about 'crippling' products, 'vendor lock-in', 'ignoring open standards'. It may look like I'm "pro" H.264 - but I'm actually not really. I don't care what codec will be used to be honest. Just have the video tag support all codecs supported by the main OS. I think the Mozilla foundation is acting like a bunch of morons refusing to go that way. There's no such thing as "forcing freedom" on people, which is exactly what they're trying to do.