Vimeo Also Introduces HTML5 Video Player

bonch writes "Following in YouTube's footsteps, Vimeo has now introduced its own beta HTML5 video player, and like YouTube, it uses H.264 and requires Safari, Chrome, or ChromeFrame. The new player doesn't suffer the rebuffering problems of the Flash version when clicking around in the video's timeline, and it also loads faster. HTML5 could finally be gaining some real momentum."

Comments

Re:This may not be an apt analogy, but

[Btarlinian]

Actually, I'm pretty sure porn went for HD-DVD. So it's not always the right indicator.

Re:Excellent.

[Philip_the_physicist]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540
They are working on a Gstreamer backend for the video tag, and that will provide support for h264. From skimming the comments, it seems that there is a working but slow patch for 3.5, which is yet to be updated for 3.6.

Re:Excellent.

[sxpert]

Now if only FireFox will get support.

I think you mean

Now if only FireFox will add support.

Now, if only the stupid h264 codec would be freed !

H.264

[FrostedWheat]

Everytime this topic comes up I am amazed at how many people think that it's somehow Mozilla's fault that Firefox doesn't support H.264.

Repeat after me: H.264 is NOT FREE, not by a long way. If Firefox included H.264 support then Firefox would also NOT BE FREE. It would be illegal for most of us to distribute a copy.

Cost for Firefox H.264: $5,000,000+ per year

[CritterNYC]

The problem with H.264 is both its patent status and the licensing cost. The patent means that it can't legally be used in software licensed under the GPL/LGPL 3.0 in countries like the US. So, Mozilla would have to add a closed-source component to Firefox for it to be able to work.

But the other problem is the licensing fee. Firefox ships so many software units that it will hit the enterprise cap for H.264 licensing every year. In 2006, that cap was $3,500,000. In 2007 it went up to $4,250,000. In 2009 it went up to $5,000,000. In 2011, it is going to go up again. So Mozilla will have to pay out $5,000,000 (and climbing) per year, just to support this one video codec in a product that they give away for free. Their revenue in their last fiscal year was $78.6 million.

Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?

Apple doesn't care, since they already hit the yearly cap anyway (see: iPod/iTunes) so it's free for them to include it in Safari. I'm not sure if Google does (can't think which apps it would be), but they have the money to do it either way. Opera and Mozilla don't currently have this expense... and they can't afford it. Nor can any other upstart browser since once they hit 200k 'units' per year, they have to start paying $0.20 per download.