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Oh, What a Lovely Standards War
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "You know something big must be afoot when people start to get worked up over video compression standards. Basically, the issue is whether the current de facto standard, H.264, will continue to dominate this field, and if not, what might take over."
Related, reader eihab writes "Nuanti, a company that develops Web browsing technologies, has produced a high-performance Ogg Theora decoder for Microsoft's Silverlight browser plugin. Nuanti's Highgate Media Suite will enable support for standards-based HTML5 video streaming with Theora in browsers that have Silverlight. It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
Except, of course, a browser that has Silverlight. :-|
Currently hooked on AMP
...Silverlight
it's just as bad as flash only from an even scummier company.
I wish there was a way to mod the original press release as +5, Epic Troll, because that's what it is with respect to Slashdot - it's going to be way more entertaining than the usual (and already somewhat tiresome) Google vs "do no evil" stories. But Microsoft's Silverlight used to enable support for Theora in pretty much all Windows browsers (and specifically IE of all things), while both Google and Apple stand by H.264 - oh my!
Hold on a second, I've got to fetch the popcorn...
Wow, got a flamebait in record time for that one.
No offense to the OGG crew and developers, but what you're not getting is that the battle is already lost. The future of web video isn't really in the browser. It's on low-powered appliances like XBoxes, iPhones, iPads, Playstations and the like. And that's now. People are already building libraries in h264 and divx because of this. It's an insurance policy against your media not becoming obsolete like VHS and DVD.
Divx just slides in because most devices will play it hardware assisted even though you need to install the codecs on a desktop.
Without hardware decoding on those low-powered devices, and the ability to play your media anywhere you damn well please with no software installs necessary and no transcoding required, you may as well not exist.
OGG's a fine set of codecs, but if I have to transcode out of it to play on anything but a desktop, basically, I have no use for it and neither does the consumer other than the idea behind it is a quite appealing one.
Now, the video is all in ISO MPEG-4 containers, with ISO H.264 video and ISO AAC audio and is playable on Linux in FlashPlayer and WebKit browsers and other players, and the complaining continues. It is disheartening.
The complaining continues because Linux users still cannot play video using FOSS solutions, due to licensing fees associated with implementation of H.264. Given the overall Linux philosophy, it's a perfectly valid complaint.
The problem is there is exactly zipola when it comes to hardware acceleration for Theora, and you can't just "use moar power!" when we are talking cell phones, netbooks, and mini-tablets. I have gotten nothing but grief for pointing this out, but if Theora is to have a chance it needs hardware acceleration by the big three-Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, and it needs it yesterday.
My GPU cost a grand total of $35 and came with H.26x, WMV 7-9, MPG 2 and 4, all accelerated out of the box. Even the cheapest onboard GPUs nowadays usually will give you H.26x, WMV, and MP4 acceleration out of the box. And building PCs I can tell you it does make a difference, even on powerful machines the playback is smoother and allows for more multitasking without video stutter.
So I would be suggesting to the FOSS community if they want Theora to get anywhere they better look at the specs AMD and Intel have released and start on hardware Theora decoding ASAP. If they get it going for those two Nvidia won't allow themselves to be left out and will get Theora acceleration if for no other reason to have a "me too!" bullet point on the GPUs. Then you will have hardware acceleration covered for most desktops and netbooks, which in turn will hopefully make the cell phone and other small Internet devices stand up and start to take notice.
But just saying Theora runs okay without hardware acceleration on your desktop won't cut it, when so much of the Internet is moving away from simply sitting at a desk all day. Both AMD and Intel have released specs on their GPUs, and isn't that what the developers have always asked for? Give us the specs and we'll take care of the rest? Well here is your chance, we need Theora acceleration if H.264 isn't to become the dominant format.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Firefox is taking an ethical stand by not allowing a situation like Unisys / GIFs to happen where you have to get sign contacts and pay license fees to host some video on your sites. Also Firefox would effectively be closed source if it adopted H.264, just like Chrome is. (Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, DOES NOT support H.264).