Why IE9 Will Not Support Codecs Other Than H.264

jlp2097 writes "There is a new article up on Microsoft's IEBlog explaining why IE9 will support only the H.264 codec: 'First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems, and overall industry momentum – each an important factor that contributes to our point of view. H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.'"

Comments

HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML5 is shaping up to be one of the biggest screw jobs we've seen yet when it comes to web standards.

At least previous standards were written with the browser users and web developers in mind. However, that just isn't the case with HTML5. It has been put together by a small number of large media corporations with vested interests in having the utmost control over a user's browsing experience. Sure, Apple and Google develop browsers, but they're media companies first and foremost when it comes to the Internet.

HTML5 will fuck developers over, and it will fuck users over. The browser vendors will never reach a consensus on which codecs to use. We, as developers, will have to waste our time supporting these browser differences, rather than improving our sites. As users, we'll get stuck having to deal with broken sites. But what's stupidest of all, of course, is that there are so many patent-free, open source options available for the vendors to standardize on.

Fuck HTML5. It's a shitty standard that's being forced on us, rather than documented commonality arising from our shared needs.