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

In other words....

[jkrise]

Don't be surprised to see a spate of patent attacks on Ogg Theora... which we may or may not fund ourselves.

Re:In other words....

[erroneus]

We may find many reasons to "hate microsoft" but I seriously doubt Microsoft will actually assert charges of patent infringement against anyone... ever. Microsoft's involvement in the software patent arms race was quite reluctant and I suspect that is still the case. Microsoft was first bitten by the software patent trend by the people who held the patent on "double-space" back in the day. There were a lot of people who were quite tickled and delighted to see the giant attacked for this. I was among them. I wasn't then able to see down the road to the hell of software patents that we are seeing today. Had we, the IT community at large, sought to limit and even deny software patents from the beginning, we might have less trouble than we have today.

In any case, we might suspect Microsoft of funding attacks against open source technologies, I doubt Microsoft will ever directly assert software patents themselves.

In my mind, in fact, I see Microsoft joining in the fight against software patents. It is as big a pain in their ass as it is for many others... probably bigger because they have a rather big ass.

The patent lawyers succeeded

[microbox]

None of us people who actually create things and do the work wanted to see software patents become a reality. But the businessmen and lawyers have had their way with us. Now we just have to do all the extra work to create working computer systems, while a few individuals go laughing to the bank.

More than anything else, I think the H.264 nonsense demonstrates the lock-down that will mark a new era of the software industry.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[MBGMorden]

I wouldn't worry much. IE is becoming less and less relevant every day. For one it's loosing marketshare on the desktop, but also very importantly is the fact that mobile devices are quickly becoming the preferred medium that people use to interact with the web. I know lots of people who are doing their everyday tasks (check Facebook, email, bank balances, etc) on their phones and are barely touching their computers - if they even bother to have one. Microsoft (and with it, IE) has an absolutely dismal marketshare in that space, and they don't look to be improving.

IMHO, while IE still has a (slipping) majority, if we're talking about something that's going to be used for the next decade, I'd be FAR more concerned with what Safari, Chrome, and to a lesser extent, Firefox, plan to do than IE.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[ducomputergeek]

And it's not just video codecs. Want to create an application that stores, processes, or transmits credit card data? You had better have about $50k in cash ready ready to pay for PA-DSS or PCI-DSS Level I certification. And that is the starting point. The documentation process pretty much means that Opensource, by its very nature, will never be PA-DSS certified. We're in the process of taking an opensource project we forked and getting it PA-DSS certified. Small development team of 4 people and it is a nightmare. While we ship the source code on every install CD the development process itself is pretty much restricted to a BSD-like invite only approach.

90% of PA-DSS is documentation. A lot of that documentation revolves around your development process including interviews with the developers to make sure that things like code reviews are indeed implemented and that requires at least 2 developers since the person who writes the code can't review the code, technical support cases are documented, if any cardholder data is used for troubleshooting, it is properly and securely deleted, etc..

And I see more of this coming down the line in the name of "data security". While it won't kill Opensource, it is going to make it pretty damn hard for a weekend hacker to create something.

Now don't get me wrong, after a year of dealing with PCI-DSS and six months of PA-DSS, I fully understand why their standards are the way they are and for the most part it's mostly a good thing. However the fact that it takes at least $10k (and as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars for PA-DSS) pretty much means that the project has to be maintained by a company that is making money off the product in some way.

BTW, the only Opensource project I know of that is PA-DSS certified is Magento. And ONLY the Enterprise edition ($8995). The Community Edition is NOT.

So, its for the DRM then...

[Phrogman]

The last phrase quoted is likely the key one - Microsoft is very focused on providing as much DRM as possible, and if this codec has the most potential in that regard from their POV, thats likely why they are supporting it. I am sure the Entertainment industry has been talking to MS about this and urging them to keep pushing on DRM type solutions.

Who cares? Theora isn't competitive.

[YesIAmAScript]

I just can't get interested in debating this stuff until Google open-sources VP8. Theora is a non-starter. It doesn't perform well and the marketplace already rejected it in enough places (i.e. virtually all portable devices) that it will never be a true competitor.

Once Google open-sources VP8 and makes it free (gratis and libre) then we'll have a real horse race. I'd love to see VP8 hardware support fast-tracked for all devices (mobile and otherwise) so we can have a competitive free solution for video.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Weezul]

Alright, answer me two questions : HTML5 is really the flash killer, yes? Isn't an open replacement for Flash an improvement over flash? I'd assume that HTML5's openness will help avoid Flash's spammyness, right? In particular, all the pop-up ads that circumvent the "Block Pop-Ups" button are using Flash now, so they'll all go away right?

I'm not sure that HTML5 will beat the Flash plus FlashBlocker combo, but that's not realistic for most users, and variations on NoScript could accomplish the same ends.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[fusiongyro]

Professional web dev here. I first heard about HTML 5 a year or two ago, in the context of their adding a bunch of new elements (<nav>, <header>, <sidebar> and so forth) and removing all the presentation markup.

Overall, HTML 5 is great. There are a few things from XHTML 1.1 which aren't going to be present which would be nice, but I can't name them offhand. The <video> tag was, to me, just a nice convenience. The war that's erupted over this is, IMO, kind of ridiculous; everyone should obviously support both if they can and Theora if they can't, unless legal issues materialize. And I think that's 100% FUD; the Xiph guys are meticulous about legality since it is basically the reason they exist. If anyone litigates Xiph, Xiph will win.

More than that, the <canvas> tag is a big deal. I hope all of CSS 3 gets implemented too. Things are looking pretty good overall. I think this video hysteria will probably blow over, and Theora will be widely available, if not installed by default, available as a plugin.