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YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.

bonch writes "YouTube is now offering the experimental option to view all YouTube videos using HTML5 in H.264 format. Supported browsers are Chrome, Safari, and the ChromeFrame plug-in for Internet Explorer. Captions, ads, and annotations aren't yet supported but are coming soon."

5 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Should be a selling feature... by Orne · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Captions, ads, and annotations aren't yet supported but are coming soon.

    The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?

    1. Re:Should be a selling feature... by slim · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Good to see Firefox not opting into a system that pushes us towards a non-free de-facto standard.

      We don't want to sleep walk into a situation where anyone who wants to encode video that they expect to be widely usable, must pay for a non-free license.

      True, Firefox walks a fine line, because it could lose market share, in which case it will all be in vain. We need ubiquitous, cheap chipsets that support Theora - or something else free. That won't happen if everyone just rolls over and pays for H.264.

    2. Re:Should be a selling feature... by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And if they don't want to mess around with the licensing terms, just embed VLC player and be done with it. Firefox not supporting H.264 helps Flash Video to survive.

      If Firefox doesn't care that Flash can play H.264 videos then they shouldn't care that VLC can play H.264 videos.

    3. Re:Should be a selling feature... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Apple and Microsoft and Google all buy the licenses for you"

      Apple doesn't. Apple is one of the patent holders in the H.264 pool. As a result, they can instead cross-license with all the other pool members outside of the pool. This is why you don't see them listed as a licensee (google and msft are fully paid up).

      In Google's case they are already so far beyond the annual organizational maximum that H.264 is fairly cheap for them, and they can't reduce their costs by using something else. But the costs are quite oppressive to start-ups and new players and makes great ammo against open source solutions.

  2. Re:Plugin/Add-on? by Ken_g6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Adobe already released a closed-source plugin to play H.264. It's called Flash Player.

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    (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)