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

H.264

[sopssa]

This is actually the same thing that has been said in the older HTML5 discussions on slashdot too.

Ideologically Theora would be great. It's open and patent-free (supposedly). But it's not as good as H.264. We have already used H.264 with Flash and MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 from MPEG LA. It hasn't created any problems and its technically better. It would be better to have an open source and free codec, but people need to work to create it. Ideology doesn't go far in corporate world, and in my honest opinion, H.264 is better for end-user because it uses less bandwidth and provides better quality and is supported in a lot more devices already.

If MPEG LA would start asking website owners and end-users for fees it would basically mean this was their last iteration in video codecs. MPEG LA also uses patents owned by other companies, so they have a saying over it. I don't think they would be that stupid.

Re:H.264

[ircmaxell]

That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users. But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose (in fact, they could make it semi-automatic. When it finds a video with a codec it doesn't have, it tries to find it, sort of how it works in Linux)... But no, they make the choice for us. It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora... It's not about providing the best experience for users. It's about binding developers hands and removing choice. They tried to do it with ActiveX, but most sites rebelled which launched Flash into the limelight. They did it with their Quirks mode. They did it in IE8 by cherry picking the CSS 3 features they "thought were useful". Stop trying to make choices for us, and leave us (the developers) to choose what's best...

Re:H.264

[Altus]

If Microsoft could be sued for including a format then that is a good reason not too. The implication has been that Theora might infringe on some patents. It may, it may not. I don't know and likely nobody here does either.

MS has little to gain by including Theora and could put its self in a bad position down the road, they might even have inside information about companies bringing litigation against Theora.

Now it seems to me that the best course of action would be to make all codecs modular and only ship with H.264 but allow other developers to distribute codecs that could plug in to IE, but that is more work and I'm not sure how much they have to gain. Its not like they cant add that in later.

Re:H.264

[mrsteveman1]

They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose (in fact, they could make it semi-automatic. When it finds a video with a codec it doesn't have, it tries to find it, sort of how it works in Linux)...

That's how Firefox works, and it's how most people install flash when it isn't included in the OS (Apple does this, ironically).

Re:H.264

[mrsteveman1]

I should have been more clear, it's how the PLUGIN system in Firefox works, but Mozilla isn't planning to support codec plugins for the video tag either.

Re:H.264

[sammy baby]

The windup...

But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose...

And, the pitch...

Of course, IE9 will continue to support Flash and other plug-ins. Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers rely on plug-ins. Plug-ins are also important for delivering innovation and functionality ahead of the standards process; mainstream video on the web today works primarily because of plug-ins... To be clear, users can install other codecs for use in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. For web browsers, developers can continue to offer plug-ins (using NPAPI or ActiveX; they are effectively equivalent in this scenario) so that webpages can play video using these codecs on Windows.

Re:H.264

[Jurily]

I fail to see how including other codecs would cause harm

Bloat. Not just in IE, but everything else that wants to give you a pleasant browsing experience, including embedded devices.

What I find interesting is, it wasn't Youtube that set the standard, after all.

Re:H.264

[ZaphDingbat]

Microsoft has an opportunity here to support a codec that free browsers-- such as Firefox-- may not be able to support, given the codec's licensing restriction.

If YouTube never works with free browsers, the proprietary browser makers all get a major boost.

Re:H.264

[ircmaxell]

From how I read that, it was akin to using flash. So if you used the tag, you could only use H.264. If you used the embed tag or the object tag, then you could use a plugin like flash or Windows Media (just like now). IMHO, that kind of defeats the point of the tag. Unless I misread/misunderstood that part...

Re:H.264

[Albanach]

That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users.

This is spot on and could be very dangerous territory for both Microsoft and Apple.

Between them they control a substantial portion of the browser market. They could very quickly find themselves in trouble from both US and EU authorities if they attempted to extend their monopoly on desktops and browsers into video codecs, especially if they both have their hands in the patents and licensing controlling that codec.

Re:H.264

[shutdown -p now]

That's not a good way to put it. TFA clearly says that the only thing that will be supported for HTML5 <video> is H.264. When they talk about plugins, they talk about Flash and Silverlight and the ability to embed Windows Media Player (via <object>).

Re:H.264

[xeoron]

If only some person or company would buyout MPEG LA and changed the licenses to be more open or free.

Re:H.264

[amorsen]

Bloat. Not just in IE, but everything else that wants to give you a pleasant browsing experience, including embedded devices.

Calling the built-in video acceleration system in Windows wouldn't be bloat. It would simply be sensible. Windows Media Player handles codecs ok, as far as I know, and adding another Windows dependency to Internet Explorer is hardly a problem.

Re:H.264

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

I fail to see how including other codecs would cause harm... it's not like H.264 suddenly stops working if it detects Theora on the system...

Don't give them any ideas!

Re:H.264

[blitzkrieg3]

It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora... It's not about providing the best experience for users.

Or Mozilla's rejection of H.264, it's not providing the best experience for users.

Re:H.264

[drinkypoo]

We have already used H.264 with Flash and MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 from MPEG LA. It hasn't created any problems and its technically better.

It has created a problem, namely that in countries where software patents exist, you cannot use Free Software to legally create H.264 video.

It would be better to have an open source and free codec, but people need to work to create it.

An acceptable codec for these purposes exists, in the form of Theora.

Re:H.264

[Elektroschock]

As long as H.264 has patent issues it does not suit to be part of html. html is an open standards, not a patented format.

Re:H.264

[sillybilly]

It causes harm to the patent owners not being able to push it as the one and only standard, and then fully locking down all video content in the world. As long as there are other video formats to convert to, any patent assault simply creates a mass exodus. So this is a preemptive move to an oncoming showdown. They are growing frustrated at the inability to jerk the rest of the world around and tell them to pay up, so now we get abuses like this:using monopoly in one domain to gain monopoly in another. This is what happens when the Microsoft-Apple-etc. IP Consortium gets full monopoly, pretending to be straw-man competition to each other: All your content are belong to us, either to me, or my cousin right over here. So payup mofos. Maffiozo style. What changes in the world from yesteryear?

By the way, I was born in a commie block country where we only had one government provided car model, stuck in the 50's design, the only difference being the color, if you were looking for variety. With a 7 year waiting list. The statistical planning committee of the 5 year communist economic congress has come to the conclusion that only manufacturing "the best", "the most efficient", and "most economical" car model cuts down on economic waste. All they had to do was weigh the pros and cons and vote on what this best thing for everyone is, and then there is no reason to make anything else that's "suboptimal." All knowing, all wise, omnipotent infinite wisdom. With pHd's in Economics from the top universities of Moscow, decorated with 50 golden stars, party achievement awards. Making everybody drive a shitty car stuck in the 1950's. Then the Berlin wall came down, and the Glasnosty and Perestroika were done with. Call it whatever you want, the car sux a fat one. I don't care about your ideology, if the stuff I'm sitting in sux, and don't tell me there isn't anything better, because I see you, Mr. Party official, ride around in a black Mercedes Benz. You don't even believe your own preaching, but you're telling me the car I'm sitting in is what the pHd economic summit committee declared as optimal. You know what, let's change, you ride around in this car, and let me ride around in that non-committee non-mandatory, customer-focus-driven, customer-picked free market produced, through all that "waste" of "unsuccessfull" models that were comparatively suboptimal.

Come to the USA, there are many cars. No waiting lists. Arguably some cars are "better" than others, just like some video codecs are better than others, but there is a "price" you pay for "better" such as losing some freedoms that things like a Theora codec would provide. I abhor any kind of totalitarian centralized control. I love the jungle, the variety.

Re:H.264

[mindwhip]

Or YouTube loses custom to the other video sites that work in all browsers...

Re:H.264

[Jurily]

And what magic codec handling library do you call on a smartphone?

Re:H.264

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Ideologically Theora would be great. It's open and patent-free (supposedly). But it's not as good as H.264.

What's wrong with it?

Re:H.264

[nine-times]

Well I think there are really 2 different issues:

• Microsoft is supporting h264
• Microsoft is supporting *only* h264

I'd like to keep the two issues distinct, because I think supporting H264 is probably the right move. Like it or not, it's the new standard. As for supporting *only* H264, Microsoft has this to say:

To be clear, users can install other codecs for use in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. For web browsers, developers can continue to offer plug-ins (using NPAPI or ActiveX; they are effectively equivalent in this scenario) so that webpages can play video using these codecs on Windows.

Not that it resolves the issue or is going to make everyone happy, but they didn't completely ignore the issue. Apple also doesn't really prevent the "video" tag from using Theora on the Mac. AFAIK, Safari uses Quicktime to play the video tag in such a way that it will permit any codec that Quicktime can play. If you install the Theora codec, then Safari will play Theora videos in the "video" tag.

However, if IE is going to support H264, then that leaves Mozilla as the odd man out. I expect Mozilla will get H264 support somehow (via a plugin or some other means), and that's the codec everyone will use. Maybe it will be supplanted in a couple of years by VP8, but Google hasn't officially announced any plans AFAIK.

Re:H.264

[bzipitidoo]

It would be better to have an open source and free codec

Indeed. You don't seem to value that aspect much. I think you ought to reexamine what that is really worth. Competition is extremely valuable. Our market economy does not function efficiently where there is no competition.

Many of us here have many years of experience wrestling with DRM, locked down formats, and hardware. We know what it's like to face the loss of valuable data when the devices that can read it begin to fail. Forget about having to pay premium prices for replacements. You may wish you had that option when you find they cannot be replaced for any price at all because they are no longer made or available. We know migrating data is expensive and uncertain. And migrating to another proprietary format will put us right back in the same situation a few years down the road. We know the pain of not being able to access proprietary formats when the software provider stops providing updates, and the obsolete computers that can run the final version of the software begin to fail, and cannot be perfectly emulated on newer hardware.

And there are so many reasons why that can happen. They could go out of business. They could decide it isn't worth supporting any more. If it's a DRM scheme, they could lose the validation data on their servers for any number of reasons. Only takes a cavalier attitude towards backups and one bad incident to do it. And why should they try to be responsible when it could be more profitable for them to force all their customers to buy everything again? They may have an agenda in which they claim the format is obsolete (and that will have a nugget of truth to it), and try to force everyone to upgrade. They might try to put their customers on a planned obsolescence treadmill, and charge exorbitant prices. Why not, when lockdown means they have no competition? They'll spend the minimum effort necessary trying to manipulate us into thinking the lack of competition isn't really so bad after all, that it frees them to provide better service and prices thanks to economies of scale. That's true, but they always do just the opposite.

Look at AT&T prior to 1984. They held up the introduction and advancement of networking for years. We would never have wasted effort on those inferior acoustic modems if not for AT&T's stranglehold. Their legacy switched network is extremely inefficient compared to packet networks. Gross inefficiency costs everyone. It used to cost $3/minute to make an international call. Today, such calls can be $0.08/minute or less, a huge price drop. The same undersea cable can carry hundreds of times more data in a packet network than in a switched network. Data compression on computers powerful enough to do it quickly also boosts the capacity. And we don't have to spend the enormous amounts of money it would cost to lay enough cables for the old system to have such capacity, or just live without.

But such scenarios are not the worst case. Worst case may be some IP hoarding troll buying rights and then sitting on them. Won't let anyone do anything, won't sell the rights, and won't do anything constructive themselves either. And they won't do it even if they could make more money. They want only to reduce competition for some other moneymaker they have, and they can't see that may not the most profitable course of action. Not having to think about it is easier for them, and they don't care what anyone else thinks. They don't have to care. So much for "the customer is always right" when our laws enable this kind of antisocial, reactionary, dictatorial business behavior. Such irrational behavior is sadly quite common. Competition is a good antidote to that sort of thing. That our laws shield such from competition is an excellent reason for making changes. And as if the direct costs to us all aren't great enough, on occasion and too often improperly, we've actually provided policing services, at our expense, to help uphold these odious and artificial tyrannies.

Until the law changes, it is best to avoid all these issues. Standards absolutely must not be encumbered.

Re:H.264

[BitZtream]

That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users. But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. They could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose (in fact, they could make it semi-automatic. When it finds a video with a codec it doesn't have, it tries to find it, sort of how it works in Linux)... But no, they make the choice for us

All true.

It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora... It's not about providing the best experience for users.

I disagree. Theora is substandard unless you car more about your political ideals than actual value of the item in question. Don't take a couple specific, tuned examples of Theora seeming to compete as an indication that its on the same playing field, its not, sorry.

It's not about providing the best experience for users. It's about binding developers hands and removing choice.

Wrong. It is about providing the best experience for users. 99.999999% of the users in the world don't want or need to make the choice or will ever be in the situation where they will need a different codec, especially if they just force the market towards using a common one. By forcing everyone to use a single standard users WILL have a better experience.

You won't be able to go screw around and use whatever random codec you want to access whatever random new fad website of the week you're visiting ... but MS and Apple don't care about you, nor do myself and most of the rest of the Internet. We just want things to work without dicking around with it. Apple and MS using their weight to do so just makes it happen faster, most of us are OK with that and the tradeoffs that come with it.

h264 is so cheap to license that I really don't give a shit about anyone who doesn't want to license it. Its not like someone can't make a closed source library for Linux to allow it to work as long as you can get over your irrational 'OMG MUST BE GPL OR I'LL DIE' bullshit. It is non-discriminitory ... they don't care what you do with it or how you implement it.

They tried to do it with ActiveX, but most sites rebelled which launched Flash into the limelight.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. These two technologies are so unrelated that I can't even fathom how you decided to combine them. You're making comparisons between a media plugin (Flash player) and an entire plugin system (ActiveX) ... which is pretty much currently identical to the same system Mozilla uses ... ActiveX is a specific type of COM object ... just like Mozilla XPCOM is just another type of COM object definition. Flash can actually be implemented as both! It however is used for slightly more specific purposes, for which both IE and Mozilla (and other browsers sharing the nsplugin api) have their own special implementations to handle those needs better.

They did it with their Quirks mode.

Meh, if they wanted to make a stand, they could have done quirks mode differently and forced standards compliance out of the box ... then you'd have far more users AND developers complaining about all the broken apps they now have to make special work arounds for.

I can see both sides of that argument having perfectly valid points and depending on who and what you have to support, I can easily see the same person ending up on either side of this argument. There wasn't a right answer here, just two bad fixes for something that should have been fixed a long time ago.

They did it in IE8 by cherry picking the CSS 3 features they "thought were useful".

True ... but the ones they p

Re:H.264

[Abcd1234]

That's the key point here. The article is a PR spin to try to make it seem like MS is protecting users. But in reality, it's an artificial limitation. ...

It's the same with Apple's rejection of Theora

It's also the same with Firefox and their rejection of anything but Theora. The simple fact is, everyone at the HTML5 table is being a total douchebag, and I, as a user, am starting to get a little sick of it.

Re:H.264

[AK Marc]

What do you think will happen if YouTube changed its codec and had a link to Chrome that supported it when you visited there with a browser that didn't support it? Do you think YouTube would die, or IE? In a battle of the monopolies, what do you think will happen?

Re:H.264

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. With the way patents work, each additional codec adds risk of patent infringement. Even if you think the risk is low, it's not zero, and given a sufficient downside (e.g. a court injuction to stop selling IE is a realistic possible result of a patent problem, which would lead to product recalls and replacement that have a significant non-zero cost), it's worth considering.
If you need a codec, it's clearly safer to pick only one.

Yes, software patents suck hugely.

Anon because I program for clients, most of whom love patents.

Re:H.264

[marcosdumay]

Microsoft wants the current patent mess to spread all over the world, and eternize. They want to give power to (not trollish) patent holders. Anyway, it is still a stupid move, making their browser defective, and I expect them to retract before release date or shortly after.

Re:H.264

[ircmaxell]

Let's celebrate the leap forward that HTML5 and the video tag represent.

Well, that's exactly what's at stake here. You have Apple and MS vowing to only support H.264. You have Mozilla vowing to support only Theora. Where the other majors stand I'm not sure (Chrome and Opera). But if there isn't a wide adoption in the codec supported by the <video> tag, it's useless. What format would you put in? H.264 would work on a large number of browsers, but it wouldn't work on a large set as well. I wonder if the <video> implementation will have graceful fallback (I know you can put content inside if the browser doesn't support the tag, but can you do that if it doesn't support the codec)? So if it stays as is (where there are 2 codecs, each with a sizable amount of market), would we be seeing: <video src="H.264 SRC"><video src="Theora SRC"><embed src="flash content"></video></video>? Unless a standard can be agreed upon with HTML5, implementing it is only going to create more headaches than we have now...

Re:H.264

[RocketRabbit]

Actually Apple rejected Theora for the same reasons that movie studios and professional video producers have.

It is simply not that great.

Re:H.264

[jirka]

Why put "supposedly." The danger of submarine patents and such nonsense is exactly the same in H.264. Just because you own some patent on your technology doesn't mean someone doesn't hold a patent on a different aspect of it. So far, this saber rattling has produced about as much as SCO has produced in terms of linux violating their copyrights. Theora has been around for YEARS and nobody has yet produced any violations.

As for "technically better," it is not justified. I can just as well say that H.264 is worse. Just because you say something, doesn't make it true. Provide evidence that compares the codecs with current versions of available encoders. The codec itself definitely does not seem to have any technological problems. There may be more hardware support for H.264, that's true. But that's not a technical problem with the codec. That's just like saying that Windows is technically better than MacOS because it runs on more computers.

The fact that H.264 has the free use exception expiration is far bigger legal issue. Your argument is that it would not be in MPEG LA's business interests to let the exception just expire and start charging? Companies never do anything stupid. They always do what is in their best long term interest. Yup. There was never an overpriced product that put a company out of business. Let's bet everything on that. Why does the strawman chimera of patents that no one can find against Theora get more traction?

Re:H.264

[Wingsy]

"They tried to do it with ActiveX"

Just think ... if they had succeeded there would have been how many thousands of viruses NOT unleashed upon the world?

Re:H.264

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes down to inconsistency of support and performance across devices and platforms. I think the war is against the little broken puzzle piece icon.

Re:H.264

[beelsebob]

Because of course we haven't been there before, and it didn't lead to hundreds of dirty old men downloading viruses as porn sites tell them they need a codec for the video.

Re:H.264

[hazydave]

android.media.MediaPlayer

Re:H.264

[cheesybagel]

You do not seem to know what Flash is. It is not merely a media plugin. It is a platform for developing applications which can be contained in a browser. In this regard it is not substantially different from, say, a Java applet.

Flash features a JIT compiler for a JavaScript like programming language, plus calls for drawing, animation, sound, video. The fact that Youtube uses it to implement a video player application does not mean this is the only possible application, in fact there are several. Years before Youtube was even founded people already frequented Newgrounds.com and played games created using Flash. Some people even used it to create whole (often horrible) web sites. Many things have claimed to be a Flash replacement in the past and none actually fully delivered in the promises. Flash always seems to find a niche of its own.

Even Flash was a vast improvement on the previous "standard" for web video - websites streamed for Windows Media Player.

Re:H.264

[tepples]

If the malware had not installed itself through ActiveX, it would have done so by having the user install a Netscape plug-in.

Re:H.264

[Acaeris]

The spec is supposed to work so that if it cannot play the content of the src attribute of the video tag it tries to display the contents of the tag itself. So, in theory at least, your example should work (but it depends on developers supporting it).

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....

[chill]

For that to happen, Ogg Theora would have to be a threat or making enough money to make it worthwhile. It hasn't gotten anywhere near that point.

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.

Re:In other words....

[BarryJacobsen]

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

Didn't Steve Jobs just say someone was preparing a portfolio to go after Theora?

Re:In other words....

[tlhIngan]

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.

More likely, anyone with any possible patents against Theora is waiting for someone with money to implement it. RIght now, there's hardly any money in any of the companies doing Theora, and suing just gets you no money at all. Mozilla? Xiph? Relatively poor, and probably good lawyers to get patents overturned. Not a good result.

But get a Google, Microsoft or Apple supporting Theora, and these guys have cash. Patent infringement? Cha-ching. Either licensing or back profits. Everyone and their dog with patents will be trying to figure out how they can cash in. Or any of the big hardware guys - Intel, ATI, nVIdia, plus all the others - Broadcom, etc.

Not to say H.264 is any better, but there are patent pools and the like, and probably some form of protection against patent infringement.

Maybe that's all that's needed - patent liability coverage - implement Theora and be covered against any potential patent lawsuits. It's one thing to say that no patents were infrtinged, but another to back it up. Hell, it can be funded by a smally royalty (they already pay for h.264).

Re:In other words....

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously doubt Microsoft will actually assert charges of patent infringement against anyone... ever.

They dont usually have to. Charges cost money. FUD costs nothing.
Didn't they recently have a case in Germany about their FAT patent.

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.

Its only a big pain in the ass if someone else has more patents than you.
Software patents are like M.A.D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
You either make sure you have the biggest stick or that you have enough patents to force a stalemate.

Re:In other words....

[init100]

I seriously doubt Microsoft will actually assert charges of patent infringement against anyone... ever.

Specific charges, with patent numbers specified, we might perhaps not see. Vague charges without specifics has already been seen multiple times, e.g. when they claimed that OSS infringed on hundreds of Microsoft patents, and that OSS will be made to pay in due time.

Microsoft's involvement in the software patent arms race was quite reluctant and I suspect that is still the case.

It may have been reluctant at first, but soon they realized the FUD value in patents. Using your patents to offensively intimidate others (i.e. not defensively in response to a patent infringement lawsuit) clearly shows that whatever reluctance they may have had in the past is now completely gone.

Re:In other words....

[Anonymous Coward]

>We may find many reasons to "hate microsoft" but I seriously doubt Microsoft will actually assert charges of patent infringement against anyone... ever.
You must have missed every time they did in relation with FAT patents like the TOMTOM case.

Re:In other words....

[Bogtha]

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 has filed an action today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and in the International Trade Commission (ITC), against TomTom NV and TomTom Inc. for infringement of Microsoft patents.

Re:In other words....

[thue]

Microsoft already have threatened to sue an open source developer, using a patent on the ASF video format. http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html

Re:In other words....

[hitmark]

Both apple and microsoft are part of the MPEG-LA, meaning they stand to earn money on h264 licenses, rather then having to pay for them.

Re:In other words....

[CannonballHead]

I thought TomTom started that patent infringement thing, and Microsoft responded to them by counter-filing?

Re:In other words....

[salsadancer]

What's the big deal? It is only an issue in the US. Our patent law clearly states this: Nach dem Wortlaut des Patentgesetzes ferner ausgenommen von der Patentierbarkeit sind u.a. die folgenden "Gegenstände": Entdeckungen sowie wissenschaftliche Theorien und mathematische Methoden, ästhetische Formschöpfungen, Pläne, Regeln und Verfahren für gedankliche Tätigkeiten, für Spiele oder für geschäftliche Tätigkeiten sowie Programme für Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, die Wiedergabe von Informationen, And that excludes programs and mathematical algorithms. And methods of doing business for that matter. Even if you can't offer this stuff in the US - the market of the future is .... Asia, right?

Re:In other words....

[Bogtha]

I think you have that the wrong way around. Microsoft filed against TomTom in February 2009, TomTom filed a countersuit the following month. They settled out of court; TomTom paid Microsoft and removed functionality, while Microsoft got to use TomTom's patents for free.

Re:In other words....

[CannonballHead]

Could be. I didn't follow it too closely. Now I'm going to have to look it up *sigh* ;)

Re:In other words....

[hazydave]

Any video CODEC other than H.264 gaining traction in the HTML5 world is a direct threat to Apple, because they only plan to support H.264 on their devices, and right now, iPhones and iPads are far more important to Apple's future than the Mac or anything else in the desktop world. Not to mention that Apple and Microsoft both have patents in the MPEG-LA patent pool on H.264. So ensuring its dominance is even a bit of pocket change.

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

[CowboyBob500]

Rubbish. As always during discussions like this you're only talking about the USA. There is a world outside where these problems don't exist. Maybe the US software industry will get locked down, but in reality, not only does the rest of the world not care, but it will use it to its advantage. Time to make sure your passport is up to date.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[justinjstark]

Only until we force ACTA and other intellectual property protections down your throat. You silly foreigners thinking you can live outside US rule.

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.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[tepples]

Microsoft (and with it, IE) has an absolutely dismal marketshare in that space, and they don't look to be improving.

That could change with Windows Phone 7.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[James_Duncan8181]

"That could change with Windows Phone 7." It could. However, I suspect it won't.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[click2005]

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

I hope so. It may break web-pages for a few years but I dont use embedded video much so I wont be too bothered.

What it might do is force changes in the patent system.

I'd like them to declare anything that becomes an ISO standard must be free from patents and licenses.
If you cant sue or be sued for an ISO standard it would solve a lot of problems. Then we can let the
ISO pick one standard and everyone is free to use it.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[westlake]

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.

How many of those mobile devices support H.264 video in hardware?

How many have a video camera?

Pretty much all of them.

Microsoft's support for H.264 is in the OS not the browser and is accessible to anyone.

Third-party applications that simply make calls to the H.264 code in Windows (and which do not incorporate any H.264 code directly) are covered by Microsoft's license of H.264. Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9

The OS could be Win 7, Win 7 Mobile, or Win 7 Embedded for your STB.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[CowboyBob500]

LOL. The EU will never agree to the US demands in that document. Europe's economy is both larger and stronger. It will be Europe telling the US when to jump soon.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[jonbryce]

I doubt it. Windows Phone 7 has all the disadvantages of the first generation iPhone without any of the advantages. Maybe Windows Phone 9 will be OK, but by that time I think they will have missed the boat.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[shutdown -p now]

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.

The decisions with respect to HTML5 video taken today will shape what is going to be used next decade. It's not like companies are going to invest a lot upfront to support HTML5 the way IE (and Safari, Chrome etc) want it, and then all convert to Theora in 5 years when IE dwindles behind Firefox or Chrome (if that even happens; who knows, IE9 could be for IE what Win7 was for Windows...)

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

It will be Europe telling the US when to jump soon.
Yes, once you default on all that sovereign debt. And a militaristic Germany unites Europe under the Deutche Mark.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[Real1tyCzech]

Advantage: Single Source codebase to support WP7, Windows, and Xbox.

How's Apple doing with that??

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[2obvious4u]

Russia?

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[lgw]

The ISO does have rules about submarine patents. One way you can get in legal trouble working on a standards committee is to fail to disclose patents covering a stanard that yuo work on creating. However, that only helps if the guy who has the patent is involved in the standards process. If the standard infringes a patent that no one involved knows about (which does happen) there's little that can be done about that.

Remember, an ISO standard by itself means little. It's not some stamp of government approval, it's merely a sign that certain reasonable practices were followed by the working group (such as actually publishing the standard, and allowing interested parties to participate in the process).

Most importantly, the ISO doesn't "pick a standard" - it's in the business of publishing standards, not of telling people which standard to use, or even to use a standard in the first place.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[linuxrocks123]

The weekend hacker will take the credit card numbers and send them through Google Checkout. And no one will know.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[BitZtream]

Hahahah yea ... that'll happen ...

Reality check ... until the EU actually starts acting like a union rather than a loose coalition of countries that want to combine power but aren't willing to give up any of their own ... nothing is going to be impressive about the European economy.

Give it another 100 - 200 years ... then the EU might be some sort of powerful state ... sadly, China will have long sense conquered the US and EU by then since they don't sit around bickering internally with themselves.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[marcosdumay]

They still are 1/3 of the world's economy, and will drag everybody down until the cost of software companies (and free software developers) making business with them (partnering with their developers/testers) is highter than the perceived income (improvements).

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[RobertM1968]

Rubbish. As always during discussions like this you're only talking about the USA. There is a world outside where these problems don't exist. Maybe the US software industry will get locked down, but in reality, not only does the rest of the world not care, but it will use it to its advantage. Time to make sure your passport is up to date.

In this case, it may be relevant due to what country Firefox, Chrome and IE are developed in.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[BZ]

We're talking about H.264 here, right? You may want to read http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/020400.html

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[jafac]

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.

. . . you mean, the businessmen and lawyers who SELL our work, and pay us to do our work. Face it. We like creating things - and these guys get a huge cut for running the cash register. Because not many of us like doing that. And without someone running the cash register, most of us will starve, no matter how much we like to create.

I'm not saying it's right - personally, I think middlemen get WAY overpaid in our economic system.

Personally, I thought that the whole point of commercializing the internet was to eliminate middlemen. (remember? 1993? Before that, the Internet, a PUBLIC resource, funded by taxpayers, not private investment, was purely military/academic).

Personally, allowing middlemen to dictate the legal terms on a national or international scale (ie. by altering copyright and patent law to incredibly abusive degrees) is tantamount to giving SOVERIEGN power, to folks who would otherwise be used-car salesmen. How did this happen?

This system does not improve innovation.
What it does is improve the middleman's ability to skim off the profits of others' labor and creation. While they're skimming - I suppose it's wise to recall that Money=Power.

How did this happen? Money=Power, and we've handed over our political power to. . . well, congress is mostly lawyers and businessmen. So whose interests do you think they govern to? You can just forget what Article I says. I'm sure most of them never read it.

Now; there actually WAS a time, in the late 1990's, where it became oddly fashionable for "high tech" companies to give EVERYONE from the executive staff (lawyers and businessmen) down to the rank and file employees and janitors, an exclusive perk known as Stock Options. Remember the days of free sodas? Those days. . . mostly past. The conventional wisdom they pushed onto us was that all that wealth and speculation at the consumer level caused a bubble, and a market crash.

1996-1999. Wasn't this about the same time the DMCA (and other atrocities, like the 1996 Telecommunications Act) were passed? Yes. And while everyone was joyfully blissing-out to their skyrocketing Cisco stocks, they were "purchasing" political "property" - in the form of these draconian copyright laws. Who were we to argue? We thought we were fucking rich beyond our wildest dreams. We ALL thought we ALL were going to retire at age 35. None of us gave a crap about all this commie stuff. Microsoft and Intel could take over the world - that was fine.

Now - the level of options handed out at the lower ranks, for many of us, yielded what seemed to be an insane fortune. But not insane enough to survive what was coming. Only the amount of capital that was handed out at the executive level had any shot of surviving. Most of the people I know who were talking about retiring at age 35, back in 1999, are flat busted, either unemployed or working their asses off at two jobs, hoping they don't get prostate cancer, nervously looking at how they're going to make their house payments as they keep working until their SSI kicks in at 75.

You bet your ass they're on the Open Source "screw Microsoft" "I hate Software Patents" bandwagon now. But not the middlemen. The middlemen took their money, bought some congressmen, bought some laws, and they're getting more money; because that's how they tilted the playing field.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[cheesybagel]

Why does Germany need to invade anyone? They already have a major economic power in the EU. War is usually the resort of economically weak countries, or resource poor countries, against other countries.

You should also check the US debt soon. Most of the so called PIIGS countries (Greece exempted) have lower debt than the US. Also Iceland is not in the EU country to whatever you may think.

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[maxwell demon]

How many programs make sense both on a phone and a gaming console?

Re:The patent lawyers succeeded

[Real1tyCzech]

Wow.

Seriously?

Have you missed all of the stories about mobile gaming?

"How many programs make sense both on a phone and a gaming console?"

Uh... Games?

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.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[internic]

Maybe some of you in the know out there can enlighten the rest of us: What makes a codec more or less conducive to DRM?

I would have thought DRM would be implemented outside the media data itself and the codec would only be come relevant once system has decided to give the user access and decrypted the data. Perhaps in some systems once they've doen the lossy part of the signal processing they do the compression and encryption as a combined operation? Or does the whole thing work an entirely different way?

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[putch]

I'm pretty sure that quote actually addresses the IP rights to the codecs and not the content.

However, DRM is probably a concern. But that doesn't explain why they'd exclude other codecs.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[moongha]

There is nothing about a codec that makes it amenable to DRM. This is uninformed fear-mongering.

DRM is incorporated at the wrapper level. For example, the 'Fairplay' DRM used by Apple is proprietary to Apple and has nothing whatsoever to do with H264.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[arthurp]

Often the DRM does need to know about the stream it is encoding though. Because it will only encode part of the stream. This is true of DVDs for instance. If you let mplayer play an encoded DVD stream you will see fragments of frames. I bet the same if true of modern DRM. It uses up space to encrypt. So you just encrypt enough to make the stream unwatchable (like only only encrypt the key frames). And to do that you need to know the structure of the stream and implementing that for multiple different stream type requires being not lazy.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Needing to sign a license agreement makes it more amenable. Whats stopping MPEG-LA from revising the h.264 license agreement to include DRM enforcement on all decoders for example?

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[dave420]

Don't like DRM? Then don't watch DRM content. It's that simple. DRM doesn't give you less content, as people who currently use DRM simply won't publish anything unless they can use DRM. The choice is between having DRM & more content, or having no DRM & less content. DRM is not forced on everyone producing audio and video for the internet, it is, however, there should someone feel the need or desire to use it. It's an option.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[RobertM1968]

There is nothing about a codec that makes it amenable to DRM. This is uninformed fear-mongering.

DRM is incorporated at the wrapper level. For example, the 'Fairplay' DRM used by Apple is proprietary to Apple and has nothing whatsoever to do with H264.

I would have thought this statement untrue. Here's why. The nature of open codecs would make adding DRM to them less likely (and easier to reverse-engineer/decrypt or bypass thus making such an attempt a waste of time in futility).

Does that apply here? Could Microsoft simply integrate DRM into h264 to satisfy groups like the RIAA/MPAA? Would that then fragment the Internet world even more? Would that create a situation where, to watch certain content (for instance from NetFlix and the likes) one would have to run IE and it's modified h264 HTML5 support? Possibly. Would that increase IE's marketshare by leveraging the tons of NetFlix (and their like) video delivery services? Would they try to create additional delivery markets like leveraging cable company video on demand via computer and a proprietary HTML5/h264 DRMd implementation?

I'm not suggesting answers to any of those questions... I am simply asking them because I think (with Microsoft's true motives currently hidden) that they are relevant to what is really going on here.

I cannot think of the last time Microsoft released anything that "followed the standards" that in truth it (1) did not really do so (at least entirely) and (2) did not contain some sort of proprietary support to further fragment things.

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[erobbin]

For one thing, Microsoft is just a small part of the patent group that owns h.264. And seeing as how Apple is another member, I don't see them allowing Microsoft to incorporate IE-specific DRM into a codec containing their work. Also, talk about anti-trust...

Re:So, its for the DRM then...

[Rakarra]

It's that simple. DRM doesn't give you less content, as people who currently use DRM simply won't publish anything unless they can use DRM. The choice is between having DRM & more content, or having no DRM & less content.

That is a false dichotomy. Publishers have published with no DRM or easily broken DRM before.

The three choices, in preferred order:

Publish with DRM.
Publish without DRM.
Publish nothing.

Content producers will not simply choose to close up shop if there were no DRM. They desperately want DRM. But if DRM is no option (and really, this is just theory as there's no chance any ban on or consumer revolt against DRM will happen), then they will choose publish without DRM over not publishing at all. Maybe they won't publish in as many forms or on as much media, but content will still get made.

Someone explain this to me.

[Pojut]

::begin displaying ignorance::

What advantage is there to restricting IE9 to only H.264? How can natively supporting more codecs be a bad thing?

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could attract patent trolls. Theora has not had a thorough patent review, and likely never will.

And besides, who uses Theora for anything anyway besides maybe for Stallman's speeches, Firefox test videos and comparison benchmarks with MP4 files stuffed with dummy data that prove once and for all that bad encoder X can compete with bad encoder Y if only someone would spend the millions of dollars necessary to market Theora like H.264 was, deploy widespread hardware support, and so on?

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Monkeedude1212]

Requires more effort on their part.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft doesn't want to touch Theora because they suspect (or know) it's about to be targeted for legal action. Natively supporting a codec that carries negative legal ramifications could come back to bite them in the ass later: no one wants to support another codec out of the goodness of their heart now, and especially one not widely used nor likely to benefit that many customers since nearly everyone else on God's green earth is using H.264, just so that they can get slapped with infringement suits later for including code that violates some arcane MPEG-LA patent. Supporting Theora would be an imprudent decision on Microsoft's part for now. H.264's patent issues are well known and can be bought off easily through licensing, on the other hand, and it's well supported by nearly everyone and immensely popular with consumers; Microsoft can cover itself legally and market its browser to the widest possible audience with H.264, so it's a smart decision on their part.

Ideology matters little in the pragmatics of business, and Microsoft's not going to bend over backwards to clear up the currently clouded patent status of Theora and defend it against what's increasingly looking like inevitable attacks from well-funded groups of patent holders who legitimately or not (does it even matter anymore?) will shove a case through some godforsaken East Texas docket... especially not when there aren't more than a handful of people actively using Theora anyway. Hell, most people probably won't ever even see a Theora video in their whole lives. Why should Microsoft waste its time?

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[keithjr]

Beyond the engineering effort to make wider support happen, there's the question of what HTML5 will use as its VIDEO element. If nobody claims support for Theora, it won't wind up being the standard. So, it's not a bad thing, but this is MS trying to exert its influence over the debate.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Sleepy]

Because Microsoft made a deal with MPEG-LA, that's why. MPEG-LA makes money off patent licensing.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[coolsnowmen]

backroom deals from patent holders?

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM! MPEG-LA has a patent pool, and is willing to use it. So far they are not charging *everyone* to use their patented technology, but looking at their licensing practices, it appears that they are getting set up to
become the sole source monopoly for digital video.

Look at the terms-of use license for any video camera that includes h.264 encoding. ONLY NON-COMMERCIAL USE! You cannot distribute video *legally* on any site that displays an ad, if it was shot with such a camera.

Look at the licensing for software that has a h.264 codec. You have to get an individual license from MPEG-LA to *legally* distribute video on commercial site (again, just one ad will do it!) This provision shows up
even if your video does not use the codec! The software was tainted, and poisoned your potential use of your own video.

Now, the capture, processing, and display channel for video has a big baited trap set in it. Can you afford the lawyers to prove in court that you never touched anything that has the h.264 taint? Just easier to pay the troll
under the bridge (Microsoft, Apple, the big media conglomerates) to leave you alone.

TA-DA! Success in converting the video channel into a READ-ONLY media distribution system. No independent video producers need apply, since volume discounts only kick in once you meet the minimum payment level
(you do have a spare 10 million dollars for our hobby don't you?)

Somehow, I see the supporters of DRM, with the deep pockets to pay the entry fees benefiting from this.
Getting backed into the corner where every step in the chain of producing, editing, and distributing must pay fees to MPEG-LA seems to be quietly getting maneuvered into place.
Anyone that has patents in the pool will probably get preferential treatment.

Independent video artists should think about who their new overlords will be. Do you think you can be well compensated when others control ALL of your distribution channels, or can reasonably begin litigation on suspicion that you (unwittingly) tainted your own video.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[kbg]

What? Adding Theora is more effort? It's an open source format, you can just download the source or the reference library implementation and integrate it with your code. Are you telling me that this is too complex for the Microsoft programmers? No this is simply a ploy to lock out any open video formats.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[westlake]

Because Microsoft made a deal with MPEG-LA, that's why. MPEG-LA makes money off patent licensing.

The profit in licensing is elsewhere.

In professional production and distribution. In hardware.

Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264. Much of what Microsoft pays in royalties is so that people who buy Windows (on a new PC from an OEM or as a packaged product) can just play H.264 video or DVD movies. Microsoft receives back from MPEG-LA less than half the amount for the patent rights that it contributes because there are many other companies that provide the licensed functionality in content and products that sell in high volume. Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9

Don't believe it?

Then try counting the number of industrial giants like Mitsubishi and Toshiba on this list: AVC/H.264 Licensees

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is part of the H.264 patent pool. The ideal situation, for them, would be something like this:

1.) People implement theora and other alternatives to H.264.
2.) Before there's too much support, they file a lawsuit against theora (and others) for infringing on the H.264 patents.
3.) They win the lawsuit, collect the money, and everyone gives up and implements H.264.
4.) The "grace" period on H.264 expires and is not renewed - they can now charge whatever they like for using it.
5.) By now, everyone has H.264 support, nobody supports any alternatives, and the cost they choose to charge for H.264 is slightly less then designing and implementing an alternative.
6.) Even if someone did design and implement an alternative, and it managed to survive the patent lawsuits that were drawn out over a decade (see SCO), H.264 is supported in hardware and so will be faster. And since most video on the web is H.264, anyone implementing an alternative will have to implement H.264 as well, and pay full price.

The whole thing falls apart if IE implements Theora or any other free codex, because they'll have a hard time suing everyone who implemented it if that includes themselves. If the lawsuit fails quickly and people implement free alternatives to H.264 just as much as they do H.264, then when the patent bomb goes off everyone will just drop H.264 for the alternatives even if they're slightly inferior.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[shutdown -p now]

The blog post reiterates "licensing issues" several times. So far as I can see, the argument goes like this:

There's no way of knowing if a particular codec infringes on some yet-unasserted patent out there or not. However, for H.264, there is a list of existing known patents, with well-defined licensing terms and body that manages them - MPEG LA. Furthermore, despite extremely wide use for several years now, no-one else so far has come up with more patents. Even if someone does, unless it's a pure patent troll (as in, company which exists solely to sue other companies over patents), they will probably just join MPEG LA to get their cut. And any patent troll would have likely come out by now, since they already have more targets to sue than they could ever handle (just think of all hardware manufacturers who produce gadgets with H.264 support...).

In contrast, Theora can potentially be hit by a patent lawsuit from one or more companies which aren't patent trolls as such, but do hold related patents - in particular, by MPEG LA members (indeed, the recent comment on Theora by Jobs hints at this). Since it hasn't been used widely yet, chances are higher that those holding the patents have either not been aware of their applicability in this case, or simply waiting for more widespread adoption to broaden the reach of the lawsuit.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[shutdown -p now]

FTFA:

Several comments speculated about Microsoft’s financial interest in the codec. (Microsoft participates in MPEG-LA with many other companies.) Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264. Much of what Microsoft pays in royalties is so that people who buy Windows (on a new PC from an OEM or as a packaged product) can just play H.264 video or DVD movies. Microsoft receives back from MPEG-LA less than half the amount for the patent rights that it contributes because there are many other companies that provide the licensed functionality in content and products that sell in high volume. Microsoft pledged its patent rights to this neutral organization in order to make its rights broadly available under clear terms, not because it thought this might be a good revenue stream. We do not foresee this patent pool ever producing a material revenue stream, and revenue plays no part in our decision here.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[nine-times]

Often when engineering/designing/building things, it's easier to limit your use cases. Supporting one codec is easier than supporting 3. Supporting 3 is easier than supporting 20. Not only is it easier to build, but it usually makes the resulting product simpler, less likely to confuse users, less likely to break, and easier to fix.

It's one of the arguments behind the idea of "standards". If there's a single HTML standard that everyone is following, it's easier for people to develop browsers and easier for people to develop websites. If the company with the largest browser market share decides to run off and do their own whacky interpretation of HTML, then it causes problems for everyone.

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[marcosdumay]

The advantaje is that the market share of alternative browsers wil increase.

For me, it looks like Microsoft is helping a partner. Microsoft being Microsoft, I'd expect them to retract from that helping once they get they share of the agreement (whatever it is). They may also not want a patent unencubered format to gain market share, software patents are one of the instruments they use to keep Linux away, and the media patents are a very important lot. They probably won't succed on that, or, more specificaly, they won't make any difference, since nearly everybody will use H.264 anyway, but the few sites that use Theora will look defective on IE. When nearly everybody used IE, that was more a problem for the site than it was for Microsoft, but now people will easily see that the site works on other browsers, and that it is IE that isn't working. There is a similar situation right now with SVG support, and Microsoft already anounced it'll backtrack (and right on time, waiting more would make the problem more visible).

Re:Someone explain this to me.

[hazydave]

Microsoft, basically, just copied Apple.

Apple is pushing for H.264 because of their devices. iPod and iPad and iPhone only have hardware for H.264 decoding. So Apple's not about to support another CODEC if they can get H.264 in there as the de-facto standard. That gets their devices closer to being first-class web residents. And the gravy... the FOSS people, in refusing to run H.264, will now be the second class netizens. This means less competition, maybe people moving from Firefox to Safari, whatever.

Microsoft is thinking the same thing. Like Apple, they have patents in the H.264 pool, so they're not spending money to support H.264.. .and they're probably making a little if everyone uses it. They want a full web experience on the X-Box or a Windows Phone, and that means H.264, particularly in the latter case. Plus, they'll have Silverlight on the devices they care about, so they have the DRMed alternative to all set up, using VC-1 (WMV9) for video. So they're equally happy to watch Apple duke it out with Adobe, given that Flash is the same kind of thing as Silverlight.

For the user, more CODECs are good... with some caveats. We benefit in the long run if web sites can make their own decisions about the video they stream. And if it's very easy to route around expenses like licensing fees. But we also want it to "just work", and that does mean on mobile devices. Apple and Microsoft are not wrong about mobile being H.264 friendly these days. Theora may be possible on some of these, but it's likely to be lower quality and more battery on many if not most. VP8 sounds great if Google does what we hope with it, but that's a long-term thing for mobile devices.

youtube

[alabandit]

in an unsurprising move, tomorrow morning Youtube and face book decide h.264 will not be used for video on there sites...

Re:youtube

[zoloto]

their this is basic 3th grade English people!

Re:youtube

[Goaway]

What the hell are you even talking about?

Re:youtube

[Thanshin]

"their". This is basic 3th grade English, people!/quote

Punctuation!

Re:youtube

[Scyth3]

their this is basic 3th grade English people!

Basic "3th" grade, eh?

Re:youtube

[mangu]

"their". This is basic 3th grade English, people!/quote

Punctuation!

Closing blockquotes!

Re:youtube

[drewhk]

All your language are belongs to us

Re:youtube

[box4831]

yeah, comes right after 2st

Re:youtube

[andrewd18]

"their". This is basic 3th grade English, people!/quote

Punctuation!

Closing blockquotes!

I wish I had mod points, for you, sir, are my hero.

Re:youtube

[Culture20]

yeah, comes right after 2st

Wait, is that pronounced "secst"? Now I know what all this secsting is about.

Re:youtube

[marcosdumay]

He is saying (on bad english) that Microsoft will be open for attacks once they release a browser that can only display H.264 movies, and that their competitors may be happy to show them their vunerabilities.

Re:youtube

[Goaway]

Yes, well, that makes absolutely no sense.

Re:360?

[jonesy16]

The Xbox 360 has supported H.264 for over a year now ...

http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx

Some more information

[masterwit]

I for one am no expert in this subject, so here are some links I ended up reading:

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

a decent article that could provide one with some insight on the patent "wars to come": http://www.vcodex.com/videocodingpatents.html

a random google search to a blog post with a good bit of information, but also opinionated: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

cnet on Microsoft's stance: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20003838-264.html

Lastly, does anyone have a good article on Opera's stance? - I had heard they are against it, but not much more than that...

Re:Some more information

[paimin]

I for one am no expert in this subject, so

You, sir, have come to the right place!

Re:Some more information

[hazydave]

Opera currently supports only Ogg Theora. And it's apparently built-in, as you'd expect for "only support", rather than using the OS. That's a shame.. they are trying to dictate user choice. They do mention that Firefox and Chrome also support Theora... Chrome offering the choice, though I don't know hoe much choice.

The Opera folks also point out that (on the Mac anyway, probably the PC too), Safari is actually doing the right thing. Despite all of Steve Jobs yaking about H.264. Safari uses the Quicktime subsystem to decode the tag. So, if you install the Quicktime CODEC for Ogg Theora, it'll play in Safari. Go here: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/

A telling thing is Opera's informative introduction to HTML5 video:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/everything-you-need-to-know-about-html5-video-and-audio/

You may notice that this has actually made playing video more complex than it was when if was Flash or "just embed a file".

Re:Some more information

[masterwit]

That was some good info within my attention span :) after 50 hours of math (take home final - finals week)

You may notice that this has actually made playing video more complex than it was when if was Flash or "just embed a file".

That is a good point, I am the point in my education (school) where I am just starting to learn web development, its nice to see the "big picture view" more often

Thanks

Is there a better, open, alternative?

[onionman]

From what I've seen of Theora, it's the performance limit, not the open source nature of it, which makes it a non-starter for many platforms. I've read some rumors about Google supposedly pushing their own open-source codec, but I haven't seen any actual products. Do they exist? Is there an open alternative that can compete with H.264 on a wide range of platforms?

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[LWATCDR]

Yes.
H.264 after we ban software patents.

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[icebraining]

For Nokia, it is the open source nature: http://brianpuccio.net/excerpts/nokia_objects_that_ogg_theora_is_a_non-starter_due_to_being_open_and_drm-incompatible

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[mcrbids]

From what I've seen of Theora, it's the performance limit, not the open source nature of it, which makes it a non-starter for many platforms.

And what, pray tell, have you seen of Theora? Are you talking about the whiney, highly inaccurate piece here a few weeks ago that threw out just enough jargon to sound relevant, but managed to compare apples to bicycles in the process? Perhaps you should see the rebuttal?

TL;DR: Many of the "points" raised were barely coherent, let alone verifiably accurate.

Ogg is an efficient, open-sourced, non-patent-encumbered container format. Theora is an efficient CODEC for video. The way patents are worded, it's tough to prove the non-patent-encumbered nature of just about anything, but that's what it was designed to be, and there are certainly no particular technical issues with its adoption except perhaps that hardware implementations are still not commonplace, even if they are available.

If the industry adopts H.264 widely, we'll all regret it in a few years.

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[PieSquared]

There are performance issues. This is especially true on mobile phones and the like that support hardware acceleration for H.264 but not Theora (though obviously this would change if everyone adopted Theora instead of H.264).

But there's more to Theora then "open source". The H.264 specifications are open. The problem is the patents. Namely that there is a "free period" for implementations of H.264, and once that ends it will suddenly start costing money to support. Microsoft, Apple, and others own some of these patents and so won't have to pay. Just about everyone else *will* have to pay, and so opposes H.264 even if the alternatives are inferior. (And google recently announced an alternative that might be more palatable to the "performance at any cost" crowd who support H.264 despite its non-free nature, as I understand it.)

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[fritsd]

Since you seem to know a bit about Theora, tell me this: is the Theora codec also based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) inside just like JPEG, MPEG etc. so that if a processor/DSP combi chip can accelerate the DCT part of the video decoding then it can just as efficiently accelerate Theora decoding?

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[Abcd1234]

And what, pray tell, have you seen of Theora?

Huh? That isn't even about Theora. You said it yourself, it's about Ogg, the container, and why it may or may not suck.

Theora is a video codec, and is best compared to MPEG-2 in terms of performance. Compared to H.264, it's obsolete, and that would be the performance limit the OP was referring to. The simple fact is, Theora can't approach H.264 in terms of quality for low-bitrate applications, and guess what? Low-bitrate is the name of the game when it comes to internet video streaming.

Re:Is there a better, open, alternative?

[paimin]

All I know is I recently coded up my band's website to inlude ogg support for songs, so Firefox could play them without Flash (via jPlayer). In ogg mode, the audio stutters and struggles, whereas in mp3 mode it is smooth as silk, both in FF via Flash and Safari via html5.

Guess which format I disabled?

If Mozilla wants to make the case for ogg as a viable alternative, they need to make this shit work now.

Less anti-MS headline:

[MonsterTrimble]

Why IE9 Will Not NATIVELY Support Other Codecs Than H.264.

From the article:

Of course, IE9 will continue to support Flash and other plug-ins. Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers rely on plug-ins. Plug-ins are also important for delivering innovation and functionality ahead of the standards process; mainstream video on the web today works primarily because of plug-ins. We’re committed to plug-in support because developer choice and opportunity in authoring web pages are very important; ISVs on a platform are what make it great. We fully expect to support plug-ins (of all types, including video) along with HTML5. There were also some comments asking about our work with Adobe on Flash and this report offers a recent discussion.

I love linux and think MS is rapidly falling behind, but let's not go overboard here.

Re:Less anti-MS headline:

[tokul]

Why IE9 Will Not NATIVELY Support Other Codecs Than H.264.

Since video is served by one html tag without any codec information, it is highly unlikely that some plugin will be able to extent it. Windows has codecs required to display video, yet IE does not play video in without some media player hacks. If Microsoft does something, it will be in their own proprietary way. Headline's antimicrosoft bias is correct.

It's already paid for

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

There are several reasons for this decision. H.264 support in Windows is already paid for (if I'm not mistaken $25 million bucks annually) and taking into account the current software patents laws in the US Microsoft doesn't want any more headache facing lawsuits having implemented support for other codecs [read Theora] which patents status isn't entirely clear and there are no powerful organizations which will protect Microsoft if some company [troll] discovers Theora is infringing their patent portfolio.

The last and probably the most important reason is that H.264 is already an unwritten standard on the Internet and this codec has an unparalleled quality and can be used for pretty much any situations (mind that *all* other existing current codecs are inferior).

Re:It's already paid for

[tepples]

Microsoft doesn't want any more headache facing lawsuits having implemented support for other codecs [read Theora] which patents status isn't entirely clear

Theora is patented by On2, a Google company. These patents are licensed permissively to the public.

and there are no powerful organizations which will protect Microsoft if some company [troll] discovers Theora is infringing their patent portfolio.

What organization will protect Microsoft, Apple, and other MPEG-LA members if some NPE not in MPEG-LA discovers that H.264 infringes?

There's no better choice, unfortunately.

[LaminatorX]

MPEG-LA's patent portfolio is sufficiently mighty that a competing video codec would have to be designed from the ground up with the specific design goal of avoiding infringement in order to escape it's shadow. This has not been done with Theora or any other codec that I'm aware of.

Combine this with the fact that MPEG-LA's licensing terms have been sufficiently reasonable that you can get $100-300 gizmos with hardware decoders built in, there's little reason why for anyone to oppose it on practical rather than philosophical grounds.

Ogg is inferior

[wazzzup]

The obvious reason Microsoft has standardized on h.264 is its support for DRM. However, Ogg Theora is inferior to h.264 by any standard of measurement except for licensing.

Ars has a good article summarizing a comparison study between Theora and h.264. Basically, Theora produces much lower quality videos with larger filesizes and higher CPU utilization when compared to h.264 videos with identical bitrates.

I've heard Theora advocates say "just jack up the bitrates until it looks good - we're in the age of Hulu so no big deal." I find that unacceptable. Theora will have to up its game if it wants to be a true competitor to h.264. All it has going right now is an open license.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[CoolGuySteve]

You can wrap nearly any codec's stream in DRM as long as the container supports it. So DRM has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Do not conflate H.264 with DRM.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[negRo_slim]

The obvious reason Microsoft has standardized on h.264 is its support for DRM.

Or perhaps they are unwilling to spend the development assets on adding more than one native codec when functionality can easily be extended for those so inclined with a plug in.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[tokul]

Ars has a good article summarizing a comparison study between Theora and h.264.

Good comparison should show same frame in all results. If you check displayed time, you will see that frames are different. Even if theora is inferior to h.264, Ars study is hosed or slated towards h.264.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[wazzzup]

I completely understand where you are coming from. However, I believe that plugins would go against the spirit of the HTML5 video tag where browser plugins should not be a requirement in order to watch the video.

Certainly, the browser can be made to support various codecs but HTML5 is attempting to reduce browser feature fragmentation and avoiding the current practice of constructing sites in a manner that requires dedicating time and resources to supporting multiple browsers. Why as a site owner, should I have to encode h.264 for WebKit, Flash for legacy and Theora for Firefox for each video? It's a waste of time and resources and serves only the plugin/browser creator agendas and not the end-user's agenda which is simply to watch the video. Yes, yes - I understand that DRM and licensing serves agendas that aren't the end-user's but HTML5 wants a plugin-less web and is leaving browser manufacturers to determine what that standard is. You think they would have learned their lesson but to the credit of the browser manufacturers they are playing nice for the most part with the HTML5 spec.

If Theora was competitive on a technical level to h.264 there might be a more compelling argument to standardize on Theora but the facts are it's an obscure codec with no widespread support for hardware decoding, it fails on measurements of frame quality, filesize and CPU usage, and much of world's existing videos are already encoded using h.264 (including much of Flash). Also, does the license of Theora allow for DRM wrappers? I honestly don't know but if so, then that's unfortunately a real issue going against Theora as well.

I too want an open web and wish Theora could fit that bill better than it does but I can understand why it is being dismissed by most browser manufacturers.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[Culture20]

gif and jpg are inferior too, but I bet IE9 will support them.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[edremy]

GIF and JPEG are a lot smaller than H.264/Theora/On8. Size matters here folks- we're in the process of putting in a video-on-demand server here on campus. Decent quality streams run anywhere from 1-4 Mbps- we've got tons of bandwidth on campus but ask a few hundred students to hit that all at once and watch the network start to crawl. The answer of "just up the bitrate" isn't a good option when you're slinging that kind of data already.

Re:Ogg is inferior

[TheSync]

The obvious reason Microsoft has standardized on h.264 is its support for DRM.

Uh, what DRM is in H.264? There are plenty of DRM schemes out there, but they can usually be wrapped around a number of different codecs.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[ceejayoz]

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.

"Hasn't been sued yet" is different from "patent-free".

Incidentally, HTML5 is a lot more than just video. Most of it is a great step forwards for web devs like myself.

Re:360?

[Goaway]

MKV has nothing in particular to do with h.264, except that pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.

people still use IE?

[FudRucker]

i figured between Firefox/mozilla/seamonkey & opera & google/chrome that IE was dieing and all that was left was a niche on some LANs where lan browsing was convenient for the point & click crowd

Re:360?

[Yvan256]

It doesn't support multiple audio tracks.

VP8?

[MoellerPlesset2]

Hmm, yes, but how does the supposedly soon-to-be-open-source VP8 codec stack up?

And if YouTube moves to VP8.. will Microsoft have a choice?

Best excuse for patent-encumbered formats, EVER!

[clone53421]

H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.

It’s patented, therefore it’s better. You heard it here first, folks.

But the main reason is...

[QuietLagoon]

... that Microsoft and others can use their patents to exercise control over how the codec is used ("consumer-only", otherwise you have to pay).

.

Microsoft's stance is not about "the best codec" or anything technical. It is all about the ability of the industry to maintain control over the customers of that industry via patents.

As it states in the article, " H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.". In other words, Microsoft, and the other patent holders, have a solid lock on the patents in H.264, therefore they have complete control over the codec and the users of that codec.

That reason, and only that reason, is why H.264 is being used in IE. Apple is also using H.264 because that was probably part of the deal Apple made with the RIAA/MPAA to get their content on iTunes.

Re:But the main reason is...

[DJCacophony]

Microsoft, and the other patent holders, have a solid lock on the patents in H.264, therefore they have complete control over the codec and the users of that codec.

Microsoft doesn't own the patents on H.264. Apple is also using H.264 because that was probably part of the deal Apple made with the RIAA/MPAA to get their content on iTunes

That's extremely unlikely. Jobs' artificially-imposed user restrictions on apple products exist because he makes tons of money off of them.
This is just like when he decided to put DRM on itunes tracks and refused to license fairplay in order to create vendor lock-in between itunes and the ipod.
Then, after everyone had already bought an ipod because it was the only way to play Jobs' DRM-encumbered music, he removed the DRM that he himself chose to implement. Yay steve! What a pioneer!

Of course, he later came out and claimed that the big, mean, record companies made him do it, but only stupid, gullible douchebags believed that.

They are so silly!

[lordmetroid]

What is it with these people. Only supporting one format, it's like only supporting bmp. A browser should support as much as possibly reasonable and let the people making the website decide what they will use.

Re:They are so silly!

[drewhk]

H.264 ought to be enough for anybody.

*wink*

Re:They are so silly!

[AndrewNeo]

Back in my day we only had h.263 and we liked it!

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:Who cares? Theora isn't competitive.

[thue]

So when the choice is between freedom and a slightly better performing video format, we choose the slightly better performing video format? God forbid that we have to actually make a minor sacrifice for freedom.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Nadaka]

HTML5 and WHATWG were a workaround to the W3C standards process because certain powerful interests didn't want to support the strictness of XHTML2.

Now that WHATWG's efforts have been accepted by W3C and the superior standard of XHTML2 has been shelved, what can we do to try and make the web work properly?

Re:360?

[causality]

MKV has nothing in particular to do with h.264, except that pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.

Pirates also use formats like .mp3, .avi, and less frequently .mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include .exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!

MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[ChipMonk]

Not that Microsoft cares, but Free Culture just took a big hit. Money quote:

there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don't know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes (go on, read your manuals). I was first made aware of such a restriction when someone mentioned that in a forum, about the Canon 7D dSLR. I thought it didn't apply to me, since I had bought the double-the-price, professional (or at least prosumer), Canon 5D Mark II. But looking at its license agreement last night (page 241), I found out that even my $3000 camera comes with such a basic license. So, I downloaded the manual for the Canon 1D Mark IV, which costs $5000, and where Canon consistently used the word "professional" and "video" on the same sentence on their press release for that camera. Nope! Same restriction: you can only use your professional video dSLR camera (professional, according to Canon's press release), for non-professional reasons. And going even further, I found that even their truly professional video camcorder, the $8000 Canon XL-H1A that uses mpeg2, also comes with a similar restriction. You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.

And no, this is not just a Canon problem (which to me sounds like false advertising). Sony and Panasonic, and heck, even the Flip HD, have the exact same licensing restriction.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[rinoid]

Thanks for making this point.

I certainly support creators' rights to earnings off of invention and have problems with many software patents I see from all my favorite vendors. But apart from normal hand wringing over patents this really takes the cake.

Think if Microsoft or Apple charged you a license for everything you created using your computer! What if the printer manufacturer did the same? Why didn't film companies charge me for every photo I ever published when I used to use film?

Insanity! Write your legislators, write companies, write, complain....

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[kenp2002]

Not that Microsoft cares, but Free Culture just took a big hit. Money quote:

there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don't know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes (go on, read your manuals). I was first made aware of such a restriction when someone mentioned that in a forum, about the Canon 7D dSLR. I thought it didn't apply to me, since I had bought the double-the-price, professional (or at least prosumer), Canon 5D Mark II. But looking at its license agreement last night (page 241), I found out that even my $3000 camera comes with such a basic license. So, I downloaded the manual for the Canon 1D Mark IV, which costs $5000, and where Canon consistently used the word "professional" and "video" on the same sentence on their press release for that camera. Nope! Same restriction: you can only use your professional video dSLR camera (professional, according to Canon's press release), for non-professional reasons. And going even further, I found that even their truly professional video camcorder, the $8000 Canon XL-H1A that uses mpeg2, also comes with a similar restriction. You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.

And no, this is not just a Canon problem (which to me sounds like false advertising). Sony and Panasonic, and heck, even the Flip HD, have the exact same licensing restriction.

Welcome to Digital Sharecropping.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[dwye]

For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.

Then move to California. I understand that there is a colony of patent ignorers in Hollywood, near Los Angelos.

At least, that is what happened when Thomas Edison (on the East Coast) had all the patents on moving pictures. Maybe you should think of something similar.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[steelfood]

Buy RED. It's a little pricier than the ones you've listed (until the Scarlet comes out), but it doesn't come with such nonsense restrictions.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[pjrc]

Would that complaining be about theoretically oppressive licensing restrictions, or about actual harm done to real people due to those conditions being enforced, or even threats of enforcement?

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[mgbastard]

And we should reflect for a moment, that somehow, somewhere, its thought of as legal to have a license agreement for a camera.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[BitZtream]

Its really great that they claim that and all ... but there are court cases showing that they can't charge you extra for content you create with their software, regardless of what they say.

As an example ... its like MS saying that they get to charge you for each copy of a document created in word that you print. They simply don't get to tell you what to do with the content you create. Its yours, not theirs.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[westlake]

And we should reflect for a moment, that somehow, somewhere, its thought of as legal to have a license agreement for a camera.

The license isn't for the camera, it is for professional - for profit - use of the codec.

Re:MPEG-LA is doing a happy dance

[lennier]

ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes

:O

How can a shrinkwrap restriction like that possibly be legal?

Test case coming up, methinks?

Xiph needs to indemnify

[kervin]

It's understandable no one wants to get sued over a single codec when there are so many alternatives from their point of view.

Maybe this can be underwritten or funded by a larger partner. But Theora may not get much traction if it continues to be perceived as such a legal risk.

Re:Xiph needs to indemnify

[TheTurtlesMoves]

MPEG-LA don't. Really, you sign a contract with them, which specifically says that there may be other patents that cover h.264 thats not in their portfolio, in which case you agree its between the 3rd party patent holder and you. Not MPEG-LA and they are not liable for a thing.

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:360?

[Lumpy]

the hardware and software does. I play games in surround all the time. and I get 5.1 surround out of netflix.

they choose not to simply to bone the console owner. Honestly only dirty filthy scumbags would want to watch videos on their network on their Xbox360.

Nasty dirty filthy.....

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

This is not insightful. HTML5 is a multi-vendor standard from the W3. The W3 only publish standards that are free of royalty standards (thanks to a big debate and campaign around the turn of the millenium).

HTML5 video is a major leap forward. Previously video was usually locked away behind proprietary Flash delivery interfaces. Already I am finding I can browse Youtube via my web browser and see videos (before I had to use totem's plugin or youtube-dl) because of HTML5 support. The same applies with other video sites, such as Vimeo and dailymotion that have (beta) HTML5 video players. Further, thanks to HTML5 browser support, extensions now exist which can take embedded flash video players of certain sites and transform them in place into HTML5 video.

HTML5 video is agnostic of codec - it does not specify what format video will be in, nor does it specify what formats browser must support. Just as the old IMG tag doesn't specify GIF, BMP, etc. The supported formats are whatever formats systems and browsers support. It would have been nice if W3 had been able to specify Ogg/Theora as a "must support" common-denominator format, but agreement could not be reached on that. That does NOT take away from the importance of HTML5 video.

I strongly suspect many of the people who argue against HTML5 video are people who are running proprietary video-delivery plugins in their browser.. I would ask such people to step back and reconsider the big picture:

a) Proprietary plugins running in your browser, interpreting proprietary blobs downloaded from websites, to play videos from websites using whatever format (be it patent encumbered or not)

versus

b) Your browser, potentially (likely?) free software, using openly specified standards to interpret video-player controls, to play videos from websites using whatever format (be it patent encumbered or not)

The 2nd option is a major step forward. I despair of anyone who argues that we should stick with option a because of the patent issues with /some/ video formats.

Next step: If you're in the UK, we need to lobby the BBC Trust and OfCom to get them to require the BBC to deliver its internet TV services in an open format - rather than via Adobe Flash.

Wikipedia

[tepples]

And besides, who uses Theora for anything anyway

Wikipedia and its sister sites.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Sigh.. Edits:
"free of royalty requirements".
"interpret video-player controls downloaded from websites"

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[mujadaddy]

It really depends on how much the NoScript guy hates what Evil Advertisers do with HTML5, no?

Who Cares?

[kenp2002]

May I ask a simple question:

In a world where Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera now on a regular basis beat the tar out of Microsoft... well... who really cares if IE9 won't support anything but this boobytrapped codec?

BFD IMHO.
More and more run Linux every day.
The Linux Distros are getting rather polished.
The sleepers stir and soon may wake, the tryanny of the elite may get tossed off here soon since things are going from inconvienent to painful (economy, politics, etc.)

This is like telling people that the Nazi Party is not going to support the Torah as book club canidate...

Or that the Black Panthers are not in fact allowing KKK members to join...

IE9 says no to Theora... Yeah...

In other news The Flintstones meet the Jetsons 2 has finally been cast with Alan Alda playing George Jetson with Harvey Kitel playing Cosmo. The Flintsons haven't been cast yet but odds are looking good for Warren Betty as Fred Flintson with Megan Fox as Wilma...

Re:Who Cares?

[Ant P.]

In a world where Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera now on a regular basis beat the tar out of Microsoft... well... who really cares if IE9 won't support anything but this boobytrapped codec?

And yet you seem to have no problem with Safari only supporting this same codec.

Re:Who Cares?

[kenp2002]

In a world where Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera now on a regular basis beat the tar out of Microsoft... well... who really cares if IE9 won't support anything but this boobytrapped codec?

And yet you seem to have no problem with Safari only supporting this same codec.

Because I don't buy overpriced crap from a hippie.

Which senators?

[tepples]

after we ban software patents

Which senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill that you have written?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Jurily]

Alright, answer me two questions : HTML5 is really the flash killer, yes?

Definitely not. But we'd all be happy if it was the flashbasedvideoplayer killer.

Fear

[NicknamesAreStupid]

I find it amazing that fear of the submarine patents have seriously inhibited adoption of Ogg Theora. It just proves the power of a threat -- the bigger the perceived threat, the much less likely it has to be. Of course, it does not hurt a threat to have the support of people who stand to gain from the alternatives.

Re:Fear

[drinkypoo]

Apple and Microsoft are H.264 licensors. The only fear relating to Theora is that they fear they will miss out on H.264 licensing fees if Theora gains traction.

Re:Fear

[RAMMS EIN]

Actually, I wonder if the reason we aren't seeing more Theora adoption is for a much more mundane fear. Not the fear that Theora will actually turn out to contain intellectual property that will end up costing you ... but rather that if you decide to use Theora, MPEG-LA will raise the fee it charges you for H.264 support. IANAL, but if they can do that, that will be a nice way to ensure that Theora has a price tag on it despite being Free, and in a world where people expect to have H.264 support, I can see why vendors would rather not pay the penalty for supporting another codec.

Re:360?

[Yvan256]

I'm not talking about multiple audio channels, I'm talking multiple audio tracks.

Trojan codecs

[tepples]

hey could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose

Malware posing as codecs is how you get shit like Antivirus XP on PCs.

Re:Trojan codecs

[H0p313ss]

hey could quite easily make it a plugin system where it would ship with one or two codecs, and users could "install" others if they choose

Malware posing as codecs is how you get shit like Antivirus XP on PCs.

My thoughts exactly. Browser extensions have already cost Microsoft and Microsoft users MILLIONS. Suggesting they provide a whole new back door in the name of OSS is naive to say the least.

If there's one thing Microsoft has learned about selling to the masses it's that their userbase is infested with stupidity without bound. They can't make the users less stupid, but they can try to reduce the overall cost of stupidity.

Re:Trojan codecs

[jedidiah]

> My thoughts exactly. Browser extensions have already cost Microsoft and Microsoft users MILLIONS. Suggesting they provide a whole new back door in the name of OSS is naive to say the least.

What new back door? It's a back door that's always been there.

OTOH, they could be a little smarter about it and make it less of a burden.

The real problem is that Windows users are already used to installing site specific plugins for stupid little things. They have no discrimination or restraint at all.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Oh, actually, option 'a' is not "whatever format video", rather it will be "video in H.263 or H.264 format (patent encumbered)". Other formats won't have accelerated support from the Flash plugin.

Moar liek VaPor8

[tepples]

It's VaPor8 until May 20. Expect a flurry of analysis then.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[icebraining]

What will really happen is that *everybody* will use H.264, but they'll either use the native HTML5 component or the Flash player for Firefox and Opera, if they don't implement it too.

Theora in Chrome

[tepples]

RIght now, there's hardly any money in any of the companies doing Theora, and suing just gets you no money at all. Mozilla? Xiph? Relatively poor, and probably good lawyers to get patents overturned. Not a good result. But get a Google, Microsoft or Apple supporting Theora, and these guys have cash.

Google Chrome plays both Theora and H.264, and Google has both cash and "probably good lawyers".

Exclusive apps

[tepples]

I have Android 2.1 phone, why would I care about Windows 7 phone?

Android will never run Halo Mobile. If a must-have exclusive app comes to Windows Phone 7, watch it gain a foothold.

Re:Exclusive apps

[psbrogna]

Be careful with "never" ... a surprising number of Windows applications, including games, run just fine under Wine on non-MS OSes such as Linux.

Re:Exclusive apps

[tepples]

Be careful with "never"

You're right: by "never" I meant "not in the first 95 years after first publication". How are you going to lawfully get Halo Mobile onto the Android phone in the first place?

Re:Exclusive apps

[cheesybagel]

Bungie belongs to Activision now. But still the point of the killer app stands. However you will most likely find that the platform with the most apps in the long run will end up being the most open one. Guess which one that is...

Re:Exclusive apps

[tepples]

Bungie belongs to Activision now.

But to whom does the Halo franchise belong? For example, Rare belongs to Microsoft, but Donkey Kong Country still belongs to Nintendo.

However you will most likely find that the platform with the most apps in the long run will end up being the most open one.

Not necessarily. A home theater PC is more open than any game console, yet the couch multiplayer games tend to be only on consoles.

True, but obvious

[jlp2097]

This wasn't supposed to be an anti-MS article - with all the previous discussions on /. regarding html5 and video I thought this was rather obvious. Quite the contrary: the article was supposed to highlight why MS made that decision and let us discuss their arguments. I for one would have probably made the same decision as the IE9 manager.

Re:True, but obvious

[amorsen]

I for one would have probably made the same decision as the IE9 manager.

Why would you bother implementing a specific codec in the browser, when Windows has a plug-in codec architecture already?

Wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep making claims like yours and the Theora developers keep SPECIFICALLY addressing those claims, and yet you APPHOLES keep making those claims.

REFERENCE

What provides protection for Theora is: (in no particular order)
(1) Active avoidance of the well known and/or aggressively enforced codec IPR.
(2) The preference for older techniques and with a strong prior
art-history needed for (1) also provides some protection against
unknown patents.
(3) Theora and or VP3 have been shipped by a multitude of
deep-pocketed entities (IBM; RedHat; Google; Apple[1]; Mozilla; etc)
who would make much better litigation targets than you likely would.
At least some of these have done their own reviews and decided to go
forward.
(4) The dynamics of patent enforcement discourage long-shot
prosecution for patents that royalties are being collected on from
other uses due to the risk of claim invalidation.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[jeffmeden]

This is insightful, if myopic. Just yesterday there was a spirited discussion on the legality of h.264 and the quagmire involved if you have *anything* to do with using it on commercial content. If your idea of a good development experience involves a) coding your site to work with IE and hence being enslaved by the MPEG-LA as soon as you become profitable or b) requiring your audience (a lot of whom WILL be Windows/IE users) to download an entire separate browser just to visit your site, then you have a pretty stiff constitution for punishment. Compared to that, the idea of having a user download a plugin (containing Free/nonFree code) that is unencumbered by legal ramifications sounds pretty benign.

Same applies to H.264

[loshwomp]

If Microsoft could be sued for including a format then that is a good reason not too. The implication has been that Theora might infringe on some patents. It may, it may not. I don't know and likely nobody here does either.

The same thing applies to h.264 or any other codec, for that matter. The only thing the MPEG license buys you is indemnification from the patents that the consortium knows about, and they explicitly make no guarantee that other unlicensed patents weren't infringed along the way. You're on your own for that.

Re:Same applies to H.264

[sjames]

So it's not even as good a deal as a protection racket.

Re:Nothing new!

[dashiznit]

Does anyone even use IE anymore? If a particular page doesn't work in Firefox, I try Chrome, then Microshaft last.

Does this mean that Windows Media is Dead ?

[mbone]

I hadn't heard that Widows Media had end-of-lifed - does this mean that it is dead ?

Re:Does this mean that Windows Media is Dead ?

[shutdown -p now]

If you mean the codec, then it is still used by Silverlight, and, as Microsoft itself noted, Silverlight still offers more DRM functionality than HTML5 video, so... probably not.

Army of MPEG-LA bots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. Every time this debate comes up, I see this huge stream of either "but H.264 is oh-so-much-better than Theora" (which doesn't matter: HTML5 standard dictating Theora as baseline wouldn't force anyone in using it!) or "but MPEG-LA has patented everything-and-your-dog", which is most probably FUD.

I can't get rid of the impression that MPEG-LA (or some of its members) have hired a spin-clinic.

Re:360?

[tepples]

pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.

Pirates also use formats like .mp3, .avi, and less frequently .mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include .exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!

The difference is that authorized publishers also use .mp3, .avi, and .vob (a renamed .mpg). Publishers have tended not to use .mkv; only format-shifters and pirates do that.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[loshwomp]

"Hasn't been sued yet" is different from "patent-free".

Sure, because those are totally orthogonal dimensions. You can get sued for using any codec (and you might even be a juicier target with something like h.264). When you buy an h.264 license, you're only indemnified against the patents the consortium holds, and you're explicitly not covered against anything else that was infringed along the way.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Tridus]

Wouldn't it be more like they were a workaround to the W3C's thing with spending years focusing on standards that nobody intends to implement or use?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[game kid]

Now that WHATWG's efforts have been accepted by W3C and the superior standard of XHTML2 has been shelved, what can we do to try and make the web work properly?

Reject the accepted efforts and use HTML4 or XHTML 1.0 until they learn how to write valid DTDs. (I haven't read the XHTML2 standard enough to judge it, but if that works for you then even better.)

Divorcing HTML from SGML seems more concession than improvement.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

It's not myopic. The web video problem has 2 dimensions:

1. The embedding/delivery dimension

2. The codec patent encumbrance problem

HTML5 video fixes the first and gives us a chance to wean the web off its addiction to a certain closed, proprietary plugin. With HTML5 the web can at least be accessible to free software (there are free implementations of H.264, even if there are patent issues).

It doesn't fix the 2nd problem. However it doesn't make it worse, indeed it probably it makes it /easier/ to start tackling this issue. The major HTML5 video browsers *already* support Ogg/Theora - unlike Flash!

I agree software patent issues are indeed a huge problem, but you can't always fix all problems in one go.

So, MS does not even support its own codecs?

[SmallFurryCreature]

What most seem to miss here is that this is NOT just Theora vs h264. Microsoft has its own codecs and there are websites out there that use Mediaplayer to show their content. So MS own customers now have to convert all their content to h264 because MS refuses to support its own codecs in its own products?

It doesn't suprise me, MS has always been one to screw over adapters of its product (see the Zune that couldn't handle MS own music store formats) but this one is humiliating if you look past the bullshit.

It would be trivial for MS to simply let IE use whatever codec is available the same way every media player does it, in fact the way its own media player does it. Then it would have support for every codec the user has at no extra cost. Now it has to limit support to a competitors codec. Talk about cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Or is MS saying that its own codecs aren't good enough? Or are insecure?

Come on MS, make a humorous statement why you don't support your own codecs. It is not like any of the jokes who call themselves journalists will think of asking this question.

Re:So, MS does not even support its own codecs?

[jo_ham]

No, no conversion needed - you'll just install a plugin.

The article is phrased in a very anti-MS way - IE9 will support any another codec via plugin, including the older WMV and other MS formats.

Re:So, MS does not even support its own codecs?

[shutdown -p now]

Microsoft has its own codecs and there are websites out there that use Mediaplayer to show their content. So MS own customers now have to convert all their content to h264 because MS refuses to support its own codecs in its own products?

Those customers would have to do it if they want to use HTML5 video, but why would they? The whole point of going HTML5 is if you want cross-browser portability - but you wouldn't get it with a codec that only IE supports, anyway. For such companies, it makes much more sense to go with Silverlight - which is still, of course, supported in IE9, and which supports VC-1.

Nor is the ability to embed WMP removed from IE9, so if they are okay with being Windows/IE-only, they can just leave everything as it is.

Re:So, MS does not even support its own codecs?

[Kjella]

OMG are you just bashing Microsoft for NOT pushing their own proprietary Win/IE only solution, and instead going for an industry standard (ITU-T and ISO) video codec? To implement a W3C standard <video> tag? They really can't win, can they... I figure they simply got a good deal with MPEG-LA which makes sure they won't be screwed, or they'd never commit in this fashion. Even Microsoft seems to realize H.264 is the way forward instead of pushing their own VC-1 codec. Mozilla will see IE9 and Chrome eat it alive once HTML5 takes off, it doesn't matter how much they're sulking in the corner about patents they're still going down.

What happens if...

[Ilgaz]

Lets say IE 9 used Windows Media frameworks (heard they merged with directx) to render video/audio in HTML5 webpages... Someone (if not already) ships a small, goodly coded decoder for Theora/VP8 whatever and plugs in... Browser, by not knowing/caring, sends it to framework to decode and shows the raw data.

That way, MSFT has no responsibility for Theora patents, it is just doing what it is supposed to do, the "evil open source" guy is to blame.

Apple already uses Quicktime framework to render video in HTML5 as far as I followed and Quicktime can and does support Theora with right codecs installed. (from Xiph).

Re:Best excuse for patent-encumbered formats, EVER

[mbone]

H.264 is licensed by MPEG-LA and has most of the heavy hitters in this area in the patent pool. So

- you know that none of these parties will come after you if you pay MPEG-LA's rates (as they can't, by the agreements they sign to join the pool) and

- if some other company does (say a patent troll), they are effectively taking on all of the companies in the pool, and had better have really deep pockets.

Now, I would rather it be unencumbered, but these are not inconsiderable advantages. Remember, just saying that another codec doesn't have any patent encumbrances doesn't make it so.

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.

Could have been worse

[ravenspear]

At least M$ is supporting a broad standard this time instead of saying they are only going to support Windows Media.

Bash FireFox first...

[bhlowe]

I am building a video player for a shareware product.. It seems like H.264 is supported by every browser I want to support except FireFox, my preferred browser. I really don't care who wins the standards wars, but for someone trying to implement cross-platform/browser video support, FireFox is making my life difficult at the moment. By the way, the promise of HTML5 video is sweet... add a video to any page with a line of html this simple:

Re:Bash FireFox first...

[RAMMS EIN]

Hi,

If you want to implement video in a cross-browser compatible way, couldn't you do it with an object tag?

That's what I used to do in the 1990s, and, as far as I can tell, that method still works.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

PS: Pray tell, do you run a certain proprietary video delivery plugin in your browser?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[jo_ham]

The BBC were doing just fine, even with iPlayer - I was using XBMC to watch beautiful HD content until they switched on swf verification on their streams. If they disabled this, or just offered up h.264 without the flash wrapper I would be happy again.

Re:xhtml2 was crap

[Nadaka]

Xforms, XML events, the xml DOM, role vs semantic style classes, throwing errors instead of making common errors part of the standard. These are all areas where xhtml2 is better than html5.

There are partial implementations available for many features of xhtml2, often as browser plugins. Just like their were for html5. Only after xhtml2 was abandoned did the major browsers start work on incorporating html5 into the browser. And even then, they have focused on things like canvas and video tags that could have been incorporated into xhtml2 without much difficulty or conflict of purpose.

Re:Best excuse for patent-encumbered formats, EVER

[shutdown -p now]

I think the argument is rather than a known patent (with well-defined licensing rules) is better than an unknown submarine one.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[forceofyoda]

... We, as developers, will have to waste our time supporting these browser differences...

I'm puzzled by this as well. From the perspective of someone who creates video, the HTML5 case is:

"Encode your video in multiple formats to support all browsers"
versus the current case
"Encode your video for flash"

Without a plugin model for adding new video decoders, I can't see how HTML5 is a Flash killer. Flash is EASY. Am I missing something here?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[jeffmeden]

You are right, but at the same time you are completely ignoring the elephant in the room. Microsoft is putting HTML5 and *only* h.264 into IE9. This means that as HTML5 gets rolled out, it *will*have*patent*problems* for anyone who wants to do 'Free' video and doesn't want to convince their users to download a different browser.

Meta-rants aside, do you see the problems coming down the road? This is the topic of the article, after all.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Hatta]

HTML5 video is a major leap forward.

It's not really. What's the difference between an HTML5 video tag and a simple hyperlink to a video file, which has worked for as long as video files have been around?

The HTML5 video tag requires your browser to be a video player too, instead of just handing off the video to your systems video player. This increases bloat. What do we get in return? We get videos embedded in a web page, instead of in their own window. Why exactly do I want that? If I'm watching the video, I only want to see the video. If for some reason I want to watch a video and browse the web at the same time, I have to create a new browser window anyway. I am having trouble coming up with any use case where embedded browser video would be preferable to an external video player.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[rtfa-troll]

When you buy an h.264 license, you're only indemnified against the patents the consortium holds, and you're explicitly not covered against anything else that was infringed along the way.

Not even that. If you notice, almost all H264 licenses, even those in expensive professional cameras, only cover personal and non commercial use. Don't dare use it on your web site, you could easily end up in breach of your H264 license.

typical terms:

Use of this product in any manner that complies with the MPEG-4 visual standard is prohibited, except for use by a consumer engaging in personal and non-commercial activities.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[jedidiah]

This is a very Apple-esque move on Microsoft's part.

Sure, it makes sense for them to favor h264 over anything else. There is really no good reason for them to pretend that other formats do not exist.

H*LL there could be legacy video files that people don't want to transcode. This isn't just about open systems zealots. Forcing one codec can be a nuissance in a number of ways.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...dude? You're just trading one butt banging for another. Hell if anything Adobe has been less douchebag about Flash than MPEG-LA, which has been "everybody owes us a check" if you actually do anything with it besides film grandma and never share. This will NOT wean anyone off of Flash, if anything it will make Flash even more powerful! Why? Simple, because MSFT and Apple refuse to support Theora, while FF and Opera refuse to support H.264. So what format can they all play? Hmmm...maybe, oh I don't know, Flash?

If they would have set a minimum of Theora support I'd be right there with you pal, but Ballmer and Jobs wouldn't have it, so what you have is another IE6 clusterfuck where you either design the website with two standards, or you just stick with Flash. It really sucks, but what do you expect when you get the big boys in on it? But if we are forced to go with Adobe or MPEG-LA, I would strongly recommend we stay with Adobe. Better the devil you know than the ticking patent troll timebomb that is H.264.

You won't see any patent attacks...

[jolyonr]

... because the threat of possible attacks (thanks, Steve) is enough to keep the people who matter from adopting it.

From my point of view, as a website developer I really have no intention of doing ANYTHING with HTML5 video until this whole mess has been resolved, and we can encode in one format that works with IE, Firefox, Safari, etc. Sadly I suspect that's going to have to mean H.264, I've no idea how Firefox are going to be able to support it, but support it they must if they dont' want to go the way of Netscape Navigator (and Firefox is my browser of choice, so I really dislike having to say this).

I remember some idiot many years ago here on slashdot left a comment saying "The lack of Ogg support is going to kill the IPod". I replied, quite correctly, that he'd got it wrong, and the lack of IPod support was going to kill Ogg. It's not quite the same state of affairs now with H.264 vs Theora, but it's not far off. H.264 is so far ahead in terms of adoption and hardware support that no-one smart is betting on Theora winning.

Nazi comment

[bigdavex]

Who wrote this? Yoda?

Why IE9 Will Not Support Other Codecs Than H.264

Why IE9 Will Not Support Codecs Other Than H.264

There is a new article up on Microsoft's IEBlog explaining why IE9 will only support H.264

There is a new article up on Microsoft's IEBlog explaining why IE9 will support only H.264

Re:Nazi comment

[VGPowerlord]

I see the problem with the first sentence, but in the second, "only support" and "support only" both make sense.

Re:Nazi comment

[Brett Buck]

A grammar Naxi, you are. Toilet trained at 6 months, you were.

Re:Nazi comment

[bigdavex]

I see the problem with the first sentence, but in the second, "only support" and "support only" both make sense.

It makes sense because the intended meaning is so much more likely than the stated meaning. "Only" modifies H.264 (H.264 but not other codecs). So the most expressive position for the word "only" is before H.264.

The other word order implies that "only" modifies "support" (support but not other actions, e.g., "invent"). I agree that the meaning in this sentence can be inferred, but the word order makes the readers' brains work harder than they should have to.

Consider this scenario:

Sitting in a driveway are a bucket of water, wax, a car, and a truck. I tell you, "I only washed the truck." What do you know? Do you know if I did or did not wash the car?
     

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Read the blog - Microsoft have *not* ruled out IE9 supporting other codecs via plugins and what not. Indeed there's a suggestion (though unclear) that IE9 may support whatever codecs are installed with WMP:

We’ve read some follow up discussion about support for more than the H.264 codec in IE9’s HTML5 video tag. To be clear, users can install other codecs for use in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.

Further, IE9 is not the only browser. Chromium supports a wealth of formats by dint of FFMpeg; WebKitGTK+ browsers support a wealth of formats thanks to GStreamer support (or will do soon); Firefox only supports Ogg/Theora at the moment - hopefully though it will gain access to system media APIs in time (gstreamer, etc).

I am baffled at how anyone can think that finally having an open delivery system, that can work with a range of formats, is *worse* than a proprietary system that only supports encumbered codecs (H.263+/VP3, VP6, H.264, MPEG-4p2), at least OOB and accelerated.

Again, I'm curious if you're using that proprietary video delivery plugin on your system?

In short, blog post goes like this in essence :

[unity100]

"Why we will only support H.264
Evil ..... evil evil evil ..... evil ... more evil ...."

Nothing Wrong WIth This

[hduff]

And nobody will care IF Microsoft permits plugin architecture for IE9 that allows free and open plugins to support other codecs.

Otherwise, too bad for Microsoft.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Well there's a philosophical question here of whether it's better to have video embedded or handed off to a plugin.

I actually agree with you. I prefer to watch video in an external, system specific player. And HTML5 makes that *much* /easier/ to implement.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[liquidsin]

i'm not sure what you're getting at here. are you saying you'd rather click a link to have a media player launch to handle video? for myself, i'd prefer to have the embedded video; you can leave it at the size it loads or full-screen it if you prefer. it's a nicer interface for the end user as they don't have to launch another app. i'd take the smooth integration of embedded video any day.

i suppose you could always just use lynx if you don't want all that multi-media in your browser. unless i'm reading you wrong, your idea seems like a big step backwards (from my perspective).

sorry, it's reality

[YesIAmAScript]

Even if the end-customer would prefer a free codec, the vendor of the content will do some cold, hard calculations. And if the non-free solution costs them less (support costs+bandwidth costs+licensing fees) they'll go with the non-free one unless they can charge the customer more for data in the free codec format in order to match their profit margins using the non-free one.

And right now the non-free solution costs the content vendors/deliverers less.

That's why the quality matters.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

So because Apple and Microsoft refuse to support Ogg/Theora we should refuse to have /any/ video standard, and so ensure web video remains in the hands of proprietary blobs that can only usefully play patent encumbered video, thus ensuring Ogg/Theora can never see any significant use for web video?

That's snatching defeat from the jaws of partial victory, I have to say.

Further, the way I read the blog article, Microsoft most definitely do NOT rule out other codec support. Indeed, there's a suggestion that perhaps additional IE9 HTML5 video codec support is just a matter of installing WMP codecs...

why IE9 REALLY won't support other codecs

[AlgorithMan]

Dean Hachamovitch (General Manager, Internet Explorer) says

Of course, developers can rely on the [codec] of the underlying operating system, like Windows 7, without paying any additional royalty.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx

to rephrase this: we like H.264 because it forces Mozilla to break compatibility with Linux or with HTML5, so using H.264 harms either Linux or Firefox

there you have it AGAIN - all the "we support FOSS" blah blah was just empty lies... behind the smile they were planning to stab "their friends" in the back. surprised?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Sigh.. Edit: "handed off to an external player".

IE9 will continue to support other codecs

[harlows_monkeys]

IE9 will continue to support other codecs via plugin.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[nmb3000]

HTML5 video is a major leap forward.

Except that it's not! As far as video playback is concerned, HTML5 is a huge step backwards.

10 years ago I could do <embed src="foo.avi" width="100" height="100"> . How is this any different than the "new" HTML5 method? To play video in a browser we've gone from using embedded plugins and apps, then to browser plugins (Flash, Silverlight), and finally now we're back to what is essentially an embedded application. Sure the browser might be taking care of some of the playback, but we're still relying on codecs being available on the client machine -- the very reason Flash took over video in the first place!

While getting everybody together and trying to agree on a specific codec will help, we can already see it's not working. Firefox and all the browsers based on it will not be able to play back h264 and most other browers won't play Ogg/Theora.

There are no restrictions on what video and audio codec can be used with the <video> tag, and users with all kinds of video files aren't going to run to transcode them to h264/Theora just so they can be "compliant". Most people have DivX/mpeg4 codecs so just stick those AVI files up! Most people have wmv/wma support, just stick those files up too! Flash and Silverlight have a lot of problems and are abused in many ways, but using them to play video is the least of their issues.

From what I can tell, we've managed to reinvent the <embed> tag. Good work everyone.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Dahamma]

HTML5 has basically become Apple's straw man argument against Flash.

May the future render this battle irrelevant

[ezonme]

In a few years we'll have the bandwith and hardware to use uncompressed video... the pros are already capturing/editing uncompressed.. it's just a matter of time.

Re:May the future render this battle irrelevant

[Antiocheian]

We are not even using uncompressed images yet, so I'd say "few" goes a long way...

But theora on low compression settings, yes, that's a possibility

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

HTML5 specifies a model for applying controls and transformations on the video.

Re:360?

[causality]

pirates like putting h.264 video in MKV containers. It's pretty obvious why Microsoft or anyone else has little interest in supporting it.

Pirates also use formats like .mp3, .avi, and less frequently .mpg. Oh, and pirate video games include .exe files. We should discontinue all support for these formats at once!

The difference is that authorized publishers also use .mp3, .avi, and .vob (a renamed .mpg). Publishers have tended not to use .mkv; only format-shifters and pirates do that.

Clearly there was no sarcasm or other humor in my post, necessitating this serious response of yours.

Oh, and format-shifting is a legitimate non-piracy use.

Re:If you did not predict this one...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I didn't.

I predicted that Micros~1 would use a far off and weird proprietary codec in a WMV container.

Submission Title is Wrong

[kismet666]

So much misinformation in the submission and comments that follow. Where in the IE blog does it say that ony H.264 will be supported in IE9? It merely talks about what will be built-in, Flash and other plug-ins will still work, you will still be able to add whatever CODECs you want. Microsoft isn't blocking any of that.

Vorbis failed, and so will Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother mentioning a few games which use Vorbis, I'm talking general public here. People used MP3 ten years ago and now they're using AAC.

People already have H.264 tools and hardware in their hands, TODAY. Pushing for Theora is pointless.

MPEG-LA will ask for fees from everybody around the planet? For what? Microsoft and Apple both pay the license fees, it's included in the OS price.

Re:Vorbis failed, and so will Theora

[koiransuklaa]

People already have H.264 tools and hardware in their hands, TODAY. ...

MPEG-LA will ask for fees from everybody around the planet? For what? Microsoft and Apple both pay the license fees, it's included in the OS price.

Sort of: remember to read the whole license agreement. As long as your use is personal and non-commercial, you are probably covered. Anything else and you usually aren't.

It's possible that the ads on your blog don't actually make it commercial (please have your lawyer check the license), but sites like slashdot would definitely have to start negotiating with MPEG-LA. A dog training club would have to get a license before they publish training videos on the web.

Is this the future we want?

Re:Vorbis failed, and so will Theora

[BitZtream]

You do realize that publishing of books, television, and movies has already been like this for years.

You realize that you aren't actually allowed to distribute most documents you create because you don't have a distribution license for the fonts you used (this is true even for most of the stock windows, office or mac fonts).

But it happens every day.

You realize that a printer has to own (in most font licenses anyway) a special 'license' in order to reprint documents you make with fonts you're legally allowed to use. Basically you can buy a font and use it to create a document, but the printer has to also by that font and pay royalties (in some, not all cases) for each copy they print.

Reusing media in television almost always requires paying per viewer for the media used from something else unless they can squeeze fair use out of it.

Just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean this stuff is new or that anyone actually cares about the 'letter of the law'.

Just because someone writes something in a contract doesn't mean its actually legal, there are exceptions and courts regularly deal with issues like this where its clearly bullshit.

Re:Vorbis failed, and so will Theora

[koiransuklaa]

You do realize that publishing of books, television, and movies has already been like this for years.

Your font and re-broadcast examples have very little to do with this. They are about copyright of the actual piece of art: that is a totally separate issue. It's important and something that needs to be looked at by anyone publishing anything, but it's still totally orthogonal to the issue at hand.

Continuing on my example case: A dog club publishing their training videos can easily avoid copyright violation. A small company can easily publish tutorial videos of their products without copyvio problems. With H.264 licensing they are in murky waters.

Just because someone writes something in a contract doesn't mean its actually legal, there are exceptions and courts regularly deal with issues like this where its clearly bullshit.

You didn't actually point out _what_ is clearly bullshit in this case. I think MPEG-LA has been quite open about their licensing and there should be no surprises to anyone who actually reads the license...

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Dahamma]

everyone should obviously support both if they can and Theora if they can't

That assumes legal issues are the primary factor. As many have said before, and the Microsoft blog reiterates - adoption of video codecs right now is more about current and future hardware support than patent issues. H.264 is the standard for all satellite and cable TV distribution, the chosen codec for all of the biggest Internet streaming serfvices, as well as supported in hardware on nearly all modern smartphones. Mainstream adoption of another codec will require its implementation by the set-top and mobile chip manufacturers, and re-encoding of the majority of current Internet content. Basically, until you convince Broadcom, Conextant, Intel, MediaTek, Marvell, Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Youtube/Google, Netflix, VUDU, Amazon, etc - don't expect anything to change.

KeyJ's codec comparison

[tepples]

(mind that *all* other existing current codecs are inferior)

I'm starting to think this is becoming a "just repeat it often enough and everybody will believe it" case.

KeyJ's codec comparison shows that Theora needs twice the bits for the same subjective picture quality. How is that argumentum ad nauseam?

People don't get tired claiming this and everybody just parrots somebody who said it before.

You say parroting; I say citing a source. Can you cite a better source?

Re:Incorrect. Theora is *not* patented by Google

[tepples]

Theora is *not* patented by Google. You may have confused it with VP8

Both VP3 and VP8 are patented by On2. The former happens to be permissively licensed.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between an HTML image tag and a simple hyperlink to an image file, which has worked for as long as image files have been around?

The HTML image tag requires your browser to be an image viewer too, instead of just handing off the image to your systems image viewer. This increases bloat. What do we get in return? We get images embedded in a web page, instead of in their own window. Why exactly do I want that? If I'm watching the image, I only want to see the image. If for some reason I want to watch an image and browse the web at the same time, I have to create a new browser window anyway. I am having trouble coming up with any use case where embedded browser image would be preferable to an external image viewer.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[mattcoz]

Incidentally, HTML5 is a lot more than just video.

Exactly, the video tag is just one very small part of it. I hate that so many people refer to it this way.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[sillybilly]

There is FUD for people to identify HTML5 with H264. The W3 would never push a proprietary technology, but they can condone the behavior of MS and Apple spreading FUD, and brainwashing people into thinking HTML5 is H264, and nothing else. It really comes down to the "de facto" "status quo" of the future, because theoretically you may use open video codecs, but if any websites do so they are bought out/taken down/assaulted/blown up by mysterious circumstances, if the only type of video content coming from the web is through proprietary codecs, then what does it matter if you still have "theoretical freedoms?" It's kind of like the Bill of Rights anymore - slowly reduced to theoretical freedoms instead of practical ones from 50-100 years ago, because in the real world, you either can't afford them anymore, or there are other catch 22's.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Hatta]

i'm not sure what you're getting at here. are you saying you'd rather click a link to have a media player launch to handle video?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

for myself, i'd prefer to have the embedded video; you can leave it at the size it loads or full-screen it if you prefer. it's a nicer interface for the end user as they don't have to launch another app.

Your external video player can scale videos anyway you want, or not at all. I'd also suggest that a one click "open with" dialog is a nicer interface than a web browser that starts a video as soon as you hit the page. Why is launching another app such a big deal?

i'd take the smooth integration of embedded video any day.

What happens if you're viewing a video in a webpage and you click a link on that page? The video stops playing. What happens when you have a video playing in one tab, and you switch to another tab. It might not be clear which tab has the video that you want to pause, rewind, whatever. With an external video player it's trivial to find it in your task manager. You call it integration, I call it entanglement. There is a benefit to having these functions separated. Software should do one thing, and do it well.

There is one thing I'll say. It would be nice if there were a one click way to pass an URL to an external video player for streaming, instead of "open with" which downloads the file first and passes that file to the video player. This could easily be done with no changes to the protocol.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[ianare]

How is not mandating a codec demonstrating a desire to "having the utmost control over a user's browsing experience" ? If anything, by letting the browser devs the choice of implementing their own codecs, users and deveopers are given more choice.

For example the very similar issue we had up until very recently with IE not supporting alpha-PNG, this was caused by MS having a monopoly on web browsers (again until recently). In a healthy competitive environment I don't see it as a big "fuck you" to devs and users. What makes most sense will endure, browsers that fall behind will lose their relevance. It seems like MS's plan backfired on them, by not giving users/devs what they need/want, they have steadily lost market and mind share.

I expect this to be a BIG problem for MS if they decide not to implement other codecs actually. If Wikipedia (which only uses theodora, obviously) doesn't work on their browser (and Apple's), but works fine on Chrome, Opera and FF, who do you see having an advantage ? Surely not MS and Apple !

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[spire3661]

I fail to see how that is in any way enforceable. If I buy a camera, I am not licensing from MPEG-LA, the manufacturer is. MPEG-LA can bitch and moan all they want about commercial use, but I highly doubt their claims would stand up in court.

Re:All submarine patents are unknown

[shutdown -p now]

Of course one can't prove that there are no submarine patents for H.264. TFA doesn't make such a claim, either.

However, H.264 has been out in the wild - and extremely popular - for considerable time now. Any patent troll could have all the money they want by suing left and right two or three years ago - there were plenty of targets at that point already, probably more than they could chase at once in the courts.

With Theora, there weren't really any lucrative (i.e. rich) targets to sue until very recently. I mean, FSF? Wikipedia? Even if you sue them into oblivion, you'd probably get a few cents for your troubles at best, and maybe not even that after they pay their lawyers.

Now with Google and Opera shipping Theora with their browsers, this has got to a point where potential patent trolls might smell profit. But then, it hasn't even been a year, and if they sue now, then obviously everyone else will drop any Theora adoption plans immediately.

Long story short, with a submarine patent, it pays to wait until the use of the patented tech is widespread. H.264 has been in this position for some time now - and nothing came out so far - but Theora has not. So, while both technologies may be targeted by submarine patents, it seems less likely for H.264 at this point.

To be honest, though, I don't think that submarine patents are the immediate threat here. The way Jobs formulated his comment on Theora, it looks like the attack isn't coming from the patent trolls just wanting to cash in, but from real companies that just happen to have generic video encoding patents - most likely MPEG LA itself.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Draek]

everyone should obviously support both if they can and Theora if they can't, unless legal issues materialize.

That was what the spec was gonna say, more or less, until Steve Jobs threw a tantrum over it and said they weren't gonna support Theora no matter what. The ensuing war has been for the most part to decide just how much of an asshole he was for doing so, as there was a fat chance of getting Microsoft to support a Free format exclusively (and as this story shows, a good chance of them doing the exact opposite), and without them the rest of the industry didn't have enough of a pull to force Apple to change their ways.

I think this video hysteria will probably blow over, and Theora will be widely available, if not installed by default, available as a plugin.

Let us hope you're right. Sadly, I believe Theora will follow in Vorbis' footsteps in being used in a few specialized niches, but being pushed largely out of the dumb, mainstream market by an alternative that's a legal minefield to the detriment of us all.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[daveime]

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?

No, because the advertisers will just use canvas tags, just like they used/abused frames, and then iframes, and then Flash.

And before you think of CanvasBlocker, it's my understanding that the canvas is the primary drawing surface for the page. Block that and you'll display no content whatsoever.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[tyrione]

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.

What a baseless little child sitting here as an anonymous coward ranting about not getting his choice of Porridge.

It goes the other way

[lehphyro]

The content provider is the one who decides what codec they will use for their content. If your browser doesn't support some codec, your browser is crap.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[tyrione]

"Hasn't been sued yet" is different from "patent-free".

Sure, because those are totally orthogonal dimensions. You can get sued for using any codec (and you might even be a juicier target with something like h.264). When you buy an h.264 license, you're only indemnified against the patents the consortium holds, and you're explicitly not covered against anything else that was infringed along the way.

I see you ignored the parent posters factual response that HTML 5 is not VIDEO 5 as you seem to fixate on.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[tyrione]

HTML5 and WHATWG were a workaround to the W3C standards process because certain powerful interests didn't want to support the strictness of XHTML2.

Now that WHATWG's efforts have been accepted by W3C and the superior standard of XHTML2 has been shelved, what can we do to try and make the web work properly?

Sorry, but having floundered through a DECADE of XML and it's Bazillion offspring HTML5 was crying to be made.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[rtfa-troll]

If it were true that only the manufacturer had a license, you wouldn't have the right to create an H264 video at all. In theory every use of the patent; both manufacturing and actual video creation; requires an explicit license from the patent owner. In practice, normally, the manufacturer gets a license which covers all possible use of the equipment and covers you too.

However; at the present moment the MPEG-LA isn't really making much money out of H264. They are just growing the market. So they are giving out very cheap and very limited licenses for now and planning for worse later.

Think of this as being like GIF, where Unysis let the format become popular and then later started charging royalties. Except this time around, you don't get the chance to claim you didn't know about the patents because you've already accepted their free time limited license offer.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[DavidTC]

Indeed there's a suggestion (though unclear) that IE9 may support whatever codecs are installed with WMP:

I would actually be amazed if this didn't happen. That can't help but be in Microsoft's best interests.

Likewise, I would be amazed if web browsers, IE9 included, didn't do 'codec lookups' when faced with something they don't understand.

But like you said, a standardize container is much better than what we have now, where everyone is essentially downloading a Flash program to play video, which is just crazy.

So ?

[vegiVamp]

Someone will write a plugin. End of story.

Slavery is freedom!

[ElusiveJoe]

My bullshit meter is overloaded.

And I thought, that after our corrupted local authorities decided to give away a part of the park and the beach to the illegal restaurant saying "but they cook good food and who cares about forests anyway" nothing could beat it. What is in common between these two cases? The attitude towards people - "Stick it!".

h.264 = you may get reamed

[AliasMarlowe]

If I buy a camera, I am not licensing from MPEG-LA, the manufacturer is. MPEG-LA can bitch and moan all they want about commercial use, but I highly doubt their claims would stand up in court.

Do you own a h.264-capable camera? If so, you should read the documents that came with it, paying special attention to the h.264 license which the camera manufacturer granted you. Even if it was sold as a "professional" video camera, it will contain those same terms, restricting your use of any h.264 videos you make with that camera to personal non-commercial purposes. That is all the camera manufacturer is permitted to grant you according to their distribution license with MPEG-LA.

You purchased and own the camera hardware (lens, switches, plastic, etc.), but you merely obtained a license for the software (codecs, etc.). You would need additional licensing from MPEG-LA to make commercial use of h.264 videos you made yourself, even though you are the copyright owner. This applies even if you transcode your video to use another codec, although MPEG-LA might have a harder time detecting your license violation in that case.

Re:h.264 = you may get reamed

[spire3661]

As I said above, I doubt that this licensing limitation would stand up to a true test of law. The slope is too slippery to allow such deeply embedded patents to encumber rational use.

Re:h.264 = you may get reamed

[aliquis]

Do you have 30 million dollars to risk and feel lucky? Well do ya PUNK?

No but I live in EU.

In Sweden even so I couldn't care less, even if I knew it was wrong I would still do it ;D

Re:h.264 = you may get reamed

[quantumphaze]

Exactly! It makes about as much sense as having to pay the manufacturer of my toaster patent royalties every time I have breakfast. They can charge for the h264 encoder, but shouldn't be able to charge me for every video I produce.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[bill_mcgonigle]

What's the difference between an HTML5 video tag and a simple hyperlink to a video file, which has worked for as long as video files have been around?

The ability to make video part of the webpage. OK, so that's what the tag has done for a decade, so I guess standardized semantics is the notion?

The HTML5 video tag requires your browser to be a video player too, instead of just handing off the video to your systems video player.

That's just an artifact of historical development techniques and popular GUI systems. Real object-based systems don't need to have these limitations. Embed the video in the page, tear it off if you want, your call.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[CAPSLOCK2000]

People are single-threaded, we work best with one window at the time. Why bother with starting video in a seperate window if that window is just going to cover the previous window? If you really want it you can still spawn a second browser window for your video.
While I agree that there plenty of uses for video in a seperate window I believe that embedded video is preferred in most cases.

Sound like what Steve Jobs said a few days ago

[ygor]

When Steve Jobs trashed Adobe Flash, didn't he say that Apple was going to use h.264 'cause it was an open standard. Admittedly, he was trashing Adobe in the same breath, but it seems to me that Microsoft is putting up the same sorta arguements. Both want to restrict browsers to h.264 for video. The only difference I see is that Microsoft did not bad-mouth Adobe Flash directly. That's just my opinion.

Who needs tags anyway?

[200_success]

What's the difference between an HTML5 video tag and a simple hyperlink to a video file, which has worked for as long as video files have been around?

My thoughts exactly! I still reminisce about the old Gopher days, when my text was unsullied by <img> tags.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[unix1]

I would ask such people to step back and reconsider the big picture:

a) Proprietary plugins running in your browser, interpreting proprietary blobs downloaded from websites, to play videos from websites using whatever format (be it patent encumbered or not)

versus

b) Your browser, potentially (likely?) free software, using openly specified standards to interpret video-player controls, to play videos from websites using whatever format (be it patent encumbered or not)

The 2nd option is a major step forward.

I guess brainwashing is working on many levels then. If someone comes to you and says I'll either (a) punch you in your face, or (b) kick you in your groin which one would you pick?

You seem to be making an argument how great it is to be kicked in the groin and how much better it would be rather than getting punched in the face. That's silly if nothing else.

When img tag fails to specify anything standard, others stepped in and we have patent-free common standards across all browsers so you, I and anyone who wants to share images can do so without paying licensing fees to MPEG-LA.

When video tag fails to define standards, corporate cartel steps in and says everyone needs to pay them or else. This is clearly NOT similar to the img tag as it exists today (unless you are comparing it to the GIF fiasco). Even with the GIF case, there was a huge public outcry against it - at least nobody as I remember called it a "step forward."

This is NOT what web standards are for. If you believe <video>[patented content]</video> is the wave of the future, then I'm sure you wouldn't mind:

<html>[patented content]</html>

as the end case of that game either.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Creepy]

Yeah, but, lets face it - Apple and Microsoft have a shared vested interest in promoting H.264 and detracting Ogg/Theora - Apple has a patent in the H.264 pool (and a pretty major one), and Microsoft has 30 US patents alone in that pool (and many non-US patents, as well - reference). Steve Jobs has even stated that he intends to create a group to go after Ogg/Theora for patent violations, saying anything to do with video is patented, and has been one of the biggest Ogg/Theora opponents from the beginning.

    Apple and Microsoft don't care about free and open standards in web browsers because it doesn't profit them - in fact, I imagine they'd like to cram as many proprietary patents in as possible so they can charge for tools to create them. With H.264 patented for at least the next 20 years, there is a lot of money to be had.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Weezul]

Your browser need not let any webpage open new windows, but flash is a binary plug-in.

Two Cents A Dance

[westlake]

SUMMARY OF AVC/H.264 LICENSE TERMS [PDF]

For (b) (1) where an end user pays directly for video services on a title-by-title basis (e.g., where viewer determines titles to be viewed or number of viewable titles are otherwise limited), royalties for video greater than 12 minutes (there is no royalty for a title 12 minutes or less) are (beginning January 1, 2006) the lower of 2% of the price paid to the Licensee (on first arms length sale of the video) or $0.02 per title (categories of licensees include legal entities that are (i) replicators of physical media, and (ii) service/content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, video DSL, internet and mobile) of VOD, PPV and electronic downloads to end users).

10 Where an end user pays directly for video services on a subscription-basis (not ordered or limited title-by-title), the applicable royalties per legal entity payable by the service or content provider are (beginning January 1, 2006) 100,000 or fewer subscribers during the year = no royalty; greater than 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers during the year = $25,000; greater than 250,000 to 500,000 subscribers during the year = $50,000; greater than 500,000 to 1,000,000 subscribers during the year = $75,000; greater than 1,000,000 subscribers during the year = $100,000.

Is it naive to suggest that "Free Culture" and "Non-Commercial" - just might have similiar and related meanings?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[loshwomp]

I see you ignored the parent posters factual response that HTML 5 is not VIDEO 5 as you seem to fixate on.

The HTML 5 comment was labeled (by the poster) as incidental, and it's also off topic, since the subject here is codecs.

Re:Define "better".

[BitZtream]

Stop spreading FUD, you have no clue what you're talking about as the h264 license doesn't do anything like what you describe.

Theora is arguable better/worse, and its an argument that is clearly not clear. There are no known patents and they've went out of their way to try and not be subject to any, thats good, but it doesn't change the fact that their still may be patents that effect it.

You have no proof of either one of your claims. The first (performance) is a highly contested debug and the second is for all practical purposes impossible to prove.

There is a lot of uncertainty and doubt involved ... unfortunately you're too blind to see where its at.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[cgenman]

A big reason why sites use flash is protection of the video stream. Netflix, for example, has to assure their content providers that their streaming video won't be trivially ripped and re-uploaded. HTML5 / H.264 have no way of handling that particular situation.

HTML 5, also, is not done. It is in draft stage, and should be a standard in 2012. At that point, it will be years before you can assume that your user's browsers support it. Right now, none of the big 4 rendering engines support HTML5 fully. Most of them don't even come close.

HTML 5 also does not support what video formats need to be supported within the tag. This is unfortunate, as if Microsoft declares that IE9 supports only H.264 in tags, then becomes a tag. No amount of post-humous arguing will change that MPEG-LA suddenly owns video on the web. Personally, I'd be willing to support a little higher bandwidth with Theora to prevent another GIF situation. After all, JPEG as a standard is greatly inferior to JPEG 2000, but when was the last time you used a JPEG 2000?

- Chris

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[AK Marc]

Likewise, I would be amazed if web browsers, IE9 included, didn't do 'codec lookups' when faced with something they don't understand.

WMP has had CODEC download for years. I've watched it try 100+ times to pull a CODEC. I've never seen it succeed. So, having a feature doesn't make it useful. If they aren't going to support it by putting it in there in the first place, why do you think they'll support it afterwards?

But I have a citation

[tepples]

Theora is derived from VP3, which is patented although permissively licensed. Please read this Wikipedia article and follow its references.

Re:Let me guess!

[marcosdumay]

Oh, no. That is fault of the bigger tyran.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[greenbird]

You are right, but at the same time you are completely ignoring the elephant in the room. Microsoft is putting HTML5 and *only* h.264 into IE9.

It's not so much an elephant anymore. More like a large dog or a small horse.

This means that as HTML5 gets rolled out, it *will*have*patent*problems* for anyone who wants to do 'Free' video and doesn't want to convince their users to download a different browser.

And this is a bad thing? Anything that convinces people to get off IE is good in my mind. Let's see. I can use IE and only most web sights will work or I can use Firefox or Chrome and they all will. Sounds like a good move on Microsoft's part to me. That is if you want to see Microsoft's control fall further.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hairyfeet]

Uhh..dude? What exactly do you think H.264 is? Patent encumbered all to hell, that's what. Who gives a shit if it isn't a binary blob, if you have to write a check or risk a lawsuit? And I don't remember Adobe threatening anybody for including Flash support, do you? MPEG-LA has made it clear you add H.264 support you WILL pay for a license, which is why Opera and FireFox don't support it. If you think supporting HTML5 will get Theora any traction I have a bridge you'd like to buy. It will ALL go H.264, and we will just trade one nasty for an even bigger one.

Now considering the way MPEG-LA has acted as of late I wouldn't want a damned thing to do with H.264. it is just too big a risk, as better than even money says when the patents get close to expire they will drop the patent bomb on anyone and everyone trying to squeeze that last dollar. Of course Jobs refuses to support Flash, but since everyone else does (including IE, which I hate but admit it still has decent marketshare) that isn't really a big issue. But if Jobs and MSFT cause everything to go H.264 all we are doing is changing one asshole for another, and if anything trading a minor asshole for a major one. If anything I would call spreading H.264 an even greater step back than simply sticking with Flash.

Finally think about this: It appears Google is gonna release the On2 codecs for free. I have seen plenty of VP6 Flash videos, the quality I'd say is probably pretty dang close to H.26x, at least to these old eyes. And with any luck the VP8 codecs will be even better. So at least we would have a way to create and share video without walking into a patent minefield, by using VP8 with a Flash wrapper. Now I admit it would be nice if Theora worked, but frankly it looks like a dead horse ATM, and I've found its performance in low power devices like nettops to be severely lacking. The VPx codecs don't seem to put near the strain as Theora and still gives a good picture, so maybe we'll have a way out of this mess.

But if you support HTML5 with H.264 you are just replacing a binary blob with a patent minefield. and looking at past and current behavior adobe has shown themselves not to be nearly half as bad when it comes to douchebaggery compared to MPEG-LA. And if you think MPEG-LA is being nasty now, what do you think will happen when they feel the clock on those patents ticking away?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oy vey.

Encode twice. Stick an extra tag in your document.

http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#markup

Works in all browsers. Stop worrying.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Hatta]

How is the browser a video player, if the video tag is format-agnostic?

The browser is going to have to provide controls for pausing, seeking, scaling, etc. It's not all in the codec.

Not having to get out of your browser to watch videos would be the main one.

Why is that a benefit? Really? What is so bad about opening another window?

Can you honestly say that you've never watched a video inline on a page? On YouTube, for instance?

When I watch online videos, I use Download Helper and launch the flv in mplayer. It's much nicer than flash.

Your grandma doesn't want to know the difference between a web browser and a video player, she wants it to work when she hits play.

When I watch videos on archive.org (they do provide direct links), it just works. Click the link, hit "open with" and it plays.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Dutch Gun]

Your external video player can scale videos anyway you want, or not at all. I'd also suggest that a one click "open with" dialog is a nicer interface than a web browser that starts a video as soon as you hit the page. Why is launching another app such a big deal?

An external video is still problematic, unless we can agree on a universal format that every external external player on every platform can handle.

There is one thing I'll say. It would be nice if there were a one click way to pass an URL to an external video player for streaming, instead of "open with" which downloads the file first and passes that file to the video player. This could easily be done with no changes to the protocol.

Yep, agree on this point.

Software should do one thing, and do it well.

It depends on how you defined "one thing". Wouldn't you define "displaying web-based content" as "one thing"? Shouldn't then, by your definition, everything be handled by the browswer? Why not launch images in a separate viewer? It completely depends on whether you interpret video as part of the web content, or something external and separate. Why the arbitrary distinction between still and moving images?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Nadaka]

One of the reasons you might get a failed attempt to download a codec from a WMP is if the "codec" it attempts to install is really mal-ware that has had its distribution site shut down.

First Apple...

[Snaller]

First Apple explains why they are making products which doesn't work on the internet(No flash) , and now microsoft joins them in explaining why their browser won't support whats out there either.

Good work people, you'll have your companies run into no time!

Re:First Apple...

[ceejayoz]

First Apple explains why they are making products which doesn't work on the internet(No flash)

People seem pretty happy with the Internet on their iPhone/iPads.

now microsoft joins them in explaining why their browser won't support whats out there either.

"What's out there"? I've yet to see Theora videos anywhere but Wikipedia. H264 shows up on Vimeo, Facebook, CNN, NYT, YouTube, and lots of others. Firefox is the odd one out here that's refusing to support "what's out there".

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Rakarra]

I am baffled at how anyone can think that finally having an open delivery system, that can work with a range of formats, is *worse* than a proprietary system that only supports encumbered codecs (H.263+/VP3, VP6, H.264, MPEG-4p2), at least OOB and accelerated.

Because as it stands today if a user/company wants to use a browser under, say, Linux, today, they won't get sued. They can install the shitty Flash plugin which the majority of web video today uses and they'll be safe. No one will bother them for that. Yes, it's proprietary, but there are few royalties involved.

Under the new proposal, if the majority of web content moves to H.264, where does that leave the web content makers and the software writers? Steve Jobs has already hinted of potential impending lawsuits in this direction. If H.264 is patent-encumbered and lawsuits break out, it will have a far more negative effect than the current status quo does. Plus, a patent-encumbered codec cannot be Free Software, so I don't really see it as being a great leap forward.

Yes, you're right, point number 1 (in your earlier post) is definitely a step forward. However, if it's paired with codec that is two steps back, I have a hard time getting excited. And until very recently I was -very- excited about the possibility of HTML5 killing video-over-flash, something I've desired for a long time.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Rakarra]

We get videos embedded in a web page, instead of in their own window

Because most people don't want that. Yes, perhaps you do, and perhaps even I do. But many end users want the experience -- they like favoriting videos, they like to leave comments, and they want it all to be integrated so that it all fits together and looks nice. And, most importantly, pretty much NO content servers want that either. When bandwidth is expensive and the ad revenue has to flow in somehow, advertising is necessary, either in the video itself or on the associated webpage.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

They can install the shitty Flash plugin which the majority of web video today uses and they'll be safe.

You mean they can install the *proprietary* flash plugin, which Adobe have paid patent licensing fees for, including to MPEG-LA. That's no different from buying proprietary video codecs for Linux, e.g. from Fluendo.

If you were to ship a full, free implementation of Flash, you would run into the exact same patent risks as shipping a free implementation of H.264.

Further, the core Flash platform does not support ANY royalty free codecs. HTML5 DOES allow for Ogg/Theora. Plus there's the small matter that we don't have any free Flash implementations (we have semi-complete ones, which work with Youtube but not generally), but we do have HTML5 video.

If you want Ogg/Theora to be a viable option for web video, please explain how advocating against HTML5 video helps.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[AK Marc]

Ever have DivX work? I haven't. And it's probably the most popularly installed codec on Windows.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Luke has no name]

You cited no examples nor provided any real discussion. You accuse HTML5 of sucking ass and it's so evil and only evil people made it, etc.

Looking at the new features of HTML5, it all looks pretty good, and the only bitching and argument seem to be from the tag which, as people have said, should be container-neutral like the tag is. The fight for codec shouldn't be in the standard, it should be in the browsers.

Clear as mud and same as before

[WWWWolf]

First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers.

That's what Microsoft said about their brand of JavaScript. And, of course, ActiveX. Those things fared really well... for certain definitions of "well" that have absolutely nothing to do with open Web standards.

H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area.

In other words "Theora could be patented, you just don't know that." FUDdy rubbish. You want the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights? Don't implement any goddamn video playback in the browser at all. Hell, since something as innocuous as object embedding bit Microsoft in the rump a while ago, maybe you should refrain from implementing any HTML features at all, if you want absolute best certainty and clarity in this matter!

Plus, since most H.264 licenses I've seen lately all demand that the software should be used for "personal and non-commercial" uses only, how the hell does this convenient, clear and certain license purchase serve Microsoft's customers? Did the IE9 developers buy the proverbial pig in a sack (They wanted "H.264 for everyone for realz" and got "no, not for profit")? Will Microsoft hand free industrial H.264 licenses to all customers, or does IE9's EULA prohibit the video playback in corporate setting?

(...don't mind me, I'm just explaining the other extreme of the FUD-filled video debate.)

The video codec issue would be a simple matter if there were no giant piles of patents to deal with.

Where does HTML5 say, use codec X only?

[SmallFurryCreature]

HTML5 can easily be implemented by just using the video codecs installed on the system. There is ZERO reason the codec used has to be in the browser. It makes sense to include a default codec with the browser although 99% of the time, the OS will have its own video codec support.

But I see you got your head to far up Bill Gates as to be able to see your own fanboy nature. "IE9 will win, because IE8, IE7, totally failed, but this time, it will do it".

Go and sign up for WM7 beta, I am sure it will be a iPhone killer. This time surely, all the previous failures were just flukes.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[TheRaven64]

it's my understanding that the canvas is the primary drawing surface for the page

That depends entirely on the page. Canvas just defines a region that you can draw on. It might be the entire page, but then a Flash applet might be the entire page. Any web page not designed by a complete idiot (at least 1% of total web pages) will continue to use non-canvas elements except where drawing is needed.

The real problem with the canvas tag is that JavaScript does not have a sane concept of encapsulation. You can block all scripts for a page, which will stop drawing on canvas, but will break other interactive elements (e.g. posting comments on Slashdot). You can turn off the canvas, so the context object is null, but that will break the scripts that try to draw to it. The nice thing about Flash is that you can disable it without affecting anything else on the page.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[TheRaven64]

For what it's worth, if you have flvstreamer installed, get_iplayer still works. It dumps a flv file that VLC and others can play.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Eightbitgnosis]

Thank you for demonstrating the communicative property of Butt Banging

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[vertinox]

Theora, while FF and Opera refuse to support H.264. So what format can they all play? Hmmm...maybe, oh I don't know, Flash?

Your missing "the not so thought of picture" here. The majority of videos watched these days via flash is of course Youtube. (There are of course others but we are talking scale here)

So it really depends on what Google decides to do with youtube.

My bet is they will support both.

And many of the other non-youtube video sites will of course support both as well as they are afraid to shut out a good percentage of their viewership either way.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[liquidsin]

that's kind of how i was looking at it as well; if i'm opening a video it's because i want to watch it. i can see that that may not always be the case. embedded video isn't going away because many designers like the vid as an element to the page layout. maybe a good solution would be to have an option in the browser to have an external player handle video instead of embedded on the page. now i'd kind of like to see a ff extension to move video to it's own tab...

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

No it isn't. There are still shows on iPlayer that are not protected (e.g. things like repeats) but newer stuff needs RTMP. To work around that you need to obtain rtmpdump, then you need to hack get_iplayer to either add a pass-through commandline argument to hand the magic SWF verification number to rtmpdump, or you need to hack rtmpdump to hard-code that number. If you find an easier way, do let me know.

I think XBMC's iPlayer plugin has been updated to support iPlayer SWF verification.

Me, I've just switched to using dvb-daemon to record stuff off the air. If I miss a show it'll be easier to download it via Bittorrent than bother with iPlayer (not watching much TV last while, so havn't had to yet).

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[lennier]

(there are free implementations of H.264, even if there are patent issues).

That's a contradiction in terms.

If a piece of software has patent issues, by definition (according to the GPL) it can't be Free if the users are not allowed to redistribute it with no further conditions.

I think you meant 'available-for-no-money-but-without-freedom'.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[smash]

OGG/theora having zero hardware support, lack of OGG supporting video tools and there being a massive backlog of h.264 encoded video has absolutely nothing to do with it of course.

If people want ogg/theora to take off and become a "standard" then people have to have an incentive to use it, first. Be it superior quality, superior hardware support, superior tools or whatever. Until at least one and preferably ALL of those elements in place, bitching about "oh but its free!" is going to fall on deaf ears.

Most people don't care about free if its crap or makes their life harder.

The CODEC/container format and video tag should be totally independent. Specify codec/container in the tag and let users pick the best codec for a given situation. For 99.99% of people, my bet is that is currently h.264. However, in future that may change - binding a codec to the tag is short sighted.

Until OGG offers something other than "its free" people bitching about it becoming a "Standard" are dreaming. No one cares.

I don't get it

[Bent Mind]

I don't get it. Why are browsers placing restrictions on codecs? Back when there was that big debate over which codec should be mandated by the standard, I thought it was smart to leave it out of the standard. After all, no other media player restricts playback to specific codecs. Now browsers are trying to restrict which codecs can be used. Why?

Why can't the browsers just use whatever is installed on the system and leave it up to the end users and media providers to decide which codecs to use, just like every other media player?

Re:I don't get it

[SuiteSisterMary]

Well, for starters, if you do as you suggest, you get 'I can't play that video on Linux, as it's in quicktime.' or 'You need to download codec pack 1.245.231.v.2010, but make sure you don't get 1.245.232.v.2010. Unless you have an ATI video card, in which case you need to download the source, run this diff file, then compile. Unless you're also using an AMD proc, in which case disable this compiler flag or you'll get weird sync issues.

Also, like they said, everybody and their dog has .264 acceleration these days, so you can be reasonably sure your video will play on an iphone as well as a quad-core.

Kind of like computers tend to go from the 'one big processor' model to the 'lots of subprocessors' model and right back, or parallel to serial right back to parallel, formats tend to go from 'lots of little specialized ones for specific uses and targets' to 'one true format' and right back.

Re:I don't get it

[Bent Mind]

you get 'I can't play that video on Linux, as it's in quicktime.' or 'You need to download codec pack 1.245.231.v.2010, but make sure you don't get 1.245.232.v.2010. Unless you have an ATI video card, in which case you need to download the source, run this diff file, then compile. Unless you're also using an AMD proc, in which case disable this compiler flag or you'll get weird sync issues.

I've not had any of these problems with current video on Internet. The only problems I've encountered are specialized plug-ins that only work on specific platforms. However, if these problems do exist, wouldn't it then be in the best interest of the media provider to use a codec that doesn't exhibit these problems? That still leaves the codec decision between the media provider and end-user, with the media player (browser) remaining neutral.

Re:I don't get it

[SuiteSisterMary]

No. Why have multiple competing codecs? Standardization isn't automatically a bad thing. Or would you prefer needing to go to a Ford gas station to gas up your Ford vehicle, due to slight incompatibilities in gas types between major manufacturers?

If there's something h.264 is missing that is required for 'internet video,' point it out. It would be far better to have it then included in the h.624 standard than to not have it at all.

Hell, look at the problems with h.264 *container* incompatibilities.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

No I mean free. See for example FFmpeg, which is LGPL licensed while implementing a variety of patented codecs - their FAQ is interesting. Some people disagree with them, but it's interesting that Google are an MPEG-LA licensee AND distribute FFmpeg with Chromium/Chrome.

Note that patents need not be universally valid. E.g. a specific patent may be recognised only in limited jurisdictions, or software patents may not be recognised generally in some. The GPLv2 specifically allows for free software that is covered by patents to still be distributed, see clause 8.

The GPLv3 is even more specific in that it seems to require only the onward transmission of any relevant patent licence rights that the distributor/contributor holds - that is it requires any rights that are held to be passed on, it does NOT require that a free software work be free of patent claims. See clause 11.

I personally don't know exactly what the legalities tbh, particularly not for the case where the creator and distributor of the code never held a patent licence. Both versions of the GPL seem to be drafted with the case of patent owners/licensees in mind, and it's not obvious what they say about the non-licensee case.

I presume however that Googles' lawyers do know though. So it does not seem to me that patent issues automatically mean software can not be considered free.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

See Chris Dibona's explanation.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[rtfa-troll]

Ah yes; the "I didn't sign this license agreement, my cat did" argument. I'm sure that'll help you lots when the MPEG-LA death squad come round your house. "You've got no right to torture me. It was my camera that did it. No; no please, not Battlefield Earth infinite loop."

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hkmwbz]

What's the difference between an HTML5 video tag and a simple hyperlink to a video file, which has worked for as long as video files have been around?

The fact that it's played within the page, and is part of the DOM, which means that you can do all sorts of stuff with the video which you can't with plugins. You can manipulate the video in all sorts of crazy ways.

The HTML5 video tag requires your browser to be a video player too, instead of just handing off the video to your systems video player. This increases bloat.

Oh no! "The IMG tag requires your browser to be an image viewer too, instead of just handing off the video to your systems image viewer! This increases bloat!"

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[CAPSLOCK2000]

That's one of the advantages of HTML5. You are no longer stuck with whatever embedded flash app the webdesigner bought for his website. Your browser is completely free to choose any player, be it embedded or external. If your browser is extensible enough you should be able to replace the video component with any plugin you like.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[TheRaven64]

I just tried it with the latest episodes of Heroes and Doctor Who, and it works fine for me with FLVStreamer v1.8i...

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[delinear]

And this is a bad thing? Anything that convinces people to get off IE is good in my mind. Let's see. I can use IE and only most web sights will work or I can use Firefox or Chrome and they all will. Sounds like a good move on Microsoft's part to me. That is if you want to see Microsoft's control fall further.

The problem is, they all won't work. People will get sucked into using h.264 because they want to target their widest audience share - nobody running a serious commercial site would put principals before profit and support an open alternative at the expense of turning away IE users, and since Flash will be around for a while to support legacy-browser users, I can see the argument running that that alternative is already "good enough" for people using FF et al. Once we start down that road it will become much more difficult to suddenly open the door to these open source alternatives at a later date. The open source browsers will either have to get on board with h.264 or risk losing the majority of their users, and we'll see a return to the bad old days of IE dominating the web. In fact, that's not worked out too badly for them in the past, gain massive market share in the first years of a new web paradigm, put in a bunch of proprietary hooks that make it hard for people to move away later, then sit back and do no more development for the next five years.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[delinear]

At least the license issues are shifted to whoever's serving the video rather than the browser vendor, and it's a lot easier to swap out the codec within a Flash container than it would be to use an alternative to h.264 video and risk turning away any browser that supports only that codec (i.e. IE, or to put it another way, probably the majority of your users). I hate Flash as much as anyone, but let's not be so hasty as to embrace something that might turn out to be even worse without thinking through all the consequences.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[delinear]

Obviously the doubled hosting costs, and the extra time and cost involved in encoding and supporting two different formats is nothing to worry about at all...

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[greenbird]

The open source browsers will either have to get on board with h.264 or risk losing the majority of their users, and we'll see a return to the bad old days of IE dominating the web.

I think you missed my point. While I agree with your premise above I disagree with your conclusion. Yes the other browsers, including the open ones like Firefox and Chrome, will have to support h.264. But they'll also support the other free alternatives. New startups tend to operate on a shoe string budget until they get popular enough for funding. So they'll tend towards using free codecs. If one of these start to get popular even more people will be switching off IE. It's not like the bad old days where MS had the power to attempt to fragment the web into MS only or everyone else. MS doesn't control h.264 and can't keep it secret and change it at a whim so no one else can support it. That's what they attempted originally with IE. In this case any browser is free to implement the only standard MS is going to support but they can support other unencumbered standards that are much cheaper to use. It will just take one web site that uses ogg to get popular and IE's numbers start dropping faster. Once IE's numbers drop low enough Google can switch youtube to ogg and MS will have to adapt or die. Either way I only see this as a plus in that IE's numbers will drop.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hazydave]

Opera and Firefox don't have to support ANY video CODEC... that's the thing. They simply had the job of decoding video off the OS, where it belongs. Presumably, if H.264 decodes, that means an H.264 video CODEC has been installed. Even if it's not a legal one, how is that Opera or Firefox's problem, any more than any other illegality in an OS they run on but don't control?

Their support of "only Theora" is the same kind of political statement Microsoft might be making by saying "only H.264". And as well intended as it might be, neither of these guys are Microsoft. And in either case, it's the users caught in the squeeze.

The tag really needs to use the OS. This will ensure that efficient, hardware accelerated CODECs get added at the pace of the OS, not the pace of browser developers working hard to support multiple platforms. It also means that individuals can route around the patent issues as they choose, or even adopt advances like VP8 or Dirac. Locking it into the brower ensures horrible performance (the main reason Flash sucks on the Mac is that Apple doesn't expose the proper video acceleration APIs) and lets the few in charge of making browsers define the formats supported. Which of course is why it's guys like Apple and Microsoft trying to force the issues on one side, and the FOSS people trying to force it on the other. But "what's best for the user" is generally not being forced at all. Give the users the option, and let the web evolve it's own way.

VP6 isn't as good as H.264... that's the primary reason Adobe went to H.264 for recent versions of flash video. VP8 is widely rumored to be better, and by a fair margin. If it's also somehow free of any MPEG-LA patent entanglements, it'll be a wonderful thing, at least for desktop video. It'll take that success, and another generation of hardware or two, before it's even possible to work well on smartphones. At least most of them.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hazydave]

Of course, Netflix isn't using Flash, but an older form of Windows Media Video, and more recently, Silverlight with VC-1.

But yeah, they want the DRM. So does any other commercial concern doing video streaming. doesn't do that.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hazydave]

Yup. And the sad thing is, most of the industry is letting Steve Jobs lead it around by the nostrils, trying to equate Flash with "closed and evil", HTML5 with "open and good", and in addition, making the argument only about video... just the low-hanging fruit in what Flash is doing these days.

Never mentioned are Apple's ulterior motives. Hurt or kill Flash to the extent it's no longer needed to be a first-class resident of the web. Then Apple customers stop pressuring Apple to support Flash, and they protect the ability to do any significant programming of the iPxxx devices outside of the iTunes walled garden. Next, ensure that really means H.264, so that all iPxxx devices will support video online, everywhere. They don't really want "open", because if most browsers support any old video CODEC, other standards could prevail, those that won't play well on iPhones. They're going to bute force this as much as possible, and try to make it sound like they're being the good guys.

And unfortunately, Jobs is largely getting away with it. I think the best chance of that not happening is Google... they have the ability to, single-handedly, make VP8 just as important to the average web user as H.264. And once you have two, hopefully most browsers will just defer to the OS for their video decoding, which will let people use Theora where they want to use it. Let the web ultimately decide, not a few greedy bastards at Microsoft or Apple.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[H3g3m0n]

The problem is that MPEG-LA claim that is impossible to implement a codec without infringing on any patents. So according VP8 will have some stuff in it that MPEG-LA have patents on. It might be that On2 have actually licensed some patents from them for use in their codecs. Of course there is a good chance this claim is a load of FUD from MPEG-LA, there are after all patents like Dirac that have been designed based on old, 20+ old techniques.

Re:well, get coding!

[Rakarra]

Since you're clearly familiar with the work involved, both in terms of the theora source code and the implementation of the codec for use in IE, you should write a patch and provide it to Microsoft.

I know you're just baiting him, but if that were actually possible, I'm sure it would quickly get done. That's one of the few open-source 'itches' that many, many coders would want to scratch.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[hairyfeet]

Yes but as we have seen time and time again patent trolls are generally afraid of the "big bads" because of the incredible amount of legal firepower they can bring. While I have no doubt just like Jobs said MPEG-LA will drop the patent bomb on Theora, probably utterly wiping them out, trying that shit with teh Google would be like a single predator stepping into the ring with Godzilla.

Patent trolls fear having their patents turned to shit, but digging up decades old precedents cost incredible amounts of time and money, and having AAA lawyers to tear their lawyers a new asshole likewise costs more than your average rockstar makes in a lifetime, but to Google? Hell they could pay that with the change out of Brin's couch.

Finally they know that if their FUD does turn out to be true that in the current climate that could be a death sentence. Having the ENTIRE video delivery system of the world locked under patents? Can you say antitrust boys and girls? I think you can. It would be pretty easy for lawyers of the firepower Google can hire to point out that if MPEG-LA is allowed to keep those patents there is pretty much no way to have video on the Internet.

So I would say, as much as I hate the uber amount of power Google has, that they have our future in their hands right now. Both Dirac and Theora have proved wanting, MPEG-LA has proven they are simply too big a douchebag to be trusted, and if VP6 is any indicator VP8 will be more than "good enough" for the vast majority. And finally Google has the power with Youtube to to pretty much kill a good portion of H.264 as far as the masses are concerned. Whatever format Google goes with the hardware manufacturers WILL follow, because their customers will ask "can it play Youtube?". So I would say H.264 HTML V5 is simply too dangerous, and VP8 in a Flash wrapper looks to be the best way out of this mess.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Dahamma]

I agree with pretty much everything you said except the last two sentences...

The problem is that between smartphones, set-top boxes, and game consoles there are now literally hundreds of millions of embedded devices with hardware support for H.264 but not VP8 or Theora (not to mention many millions more PC graphics cards with H.264 acceleration). With all of that inertia, it's going to be very hard to generate enough demand to convince the chip manufacturers to support those other codecs.

Google would have to use VP8 *instead* of H.264 for YouTube, etc, and there's no way that will happen as they would lose hundreds of millions of supported devices. They will have to encode in VP8 *as well as* H.264, and if both formats are available, what reason is there to add hardware support for VP8?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Mattsson]

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?

Nope. Probably not. If HTML5 really is able to replace flash, as in "Able to do everything flash does", idiots and retards will use HTML5 instead of flash to deliver popup ads, blinking commercials and other annoying stuff.
It will probably be harder to block.
With flash, you can simply block all flash content, or choose to not install flash at all.
With HTML5, you'd have to have the ability to only block the annoying part, since the entire page will be written in it.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[jafac]

ZIP and JPG file formats were encumbered. Heck, so was MP3, for that matter. Yeah, patent-trolls came a knockin. And were sent away with a rolled-up summons shoved up their butts.

Widely adopt - they can't sue everyone, and by the time they can, something else, open, comes along to replace it, because everyone then realizes how foolish they were supporting a closed standard. But they won't realize that UNLESS or UNTIL the patent troll gets off his fat *ss - and he may just be smart enough, this time, to know better than to lose his meal-ticket. (or not).

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[cheesybagel]

I have nothing against the HTML 5 video tag. In fact I think every browser should have it. I doubt Microsoft will only implement H.264 however. The problem with situation is that while Adobe takes care of paying end-user royalties for H.264 for anyone who uses their Flash plugin, the same is not true for current open source HTML 5 implementations. Check out the outburst from the Mozilla Foundation as one example. The same issue would apply to some other open source developer such as the KDE people working on KHTML.

It also means the Web would stop relying solely on royalty-free standards. This is one step towards building a walled web, which was the dream of people like Bill Gates (remember MSN?).

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[cheesybagel]

HTML 5 video allows specifying several video files, in different formats, inside the same HTML object. This means, like happened for PNG vs GIF, a server can host both file formats, say Theora and H.264, and the client decides which one it wants to play back.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[cheesybagel]

Current and future hardware support is bullshit. The evolution in mobile hardware has been towards programmable platforms, using a GPU, or GPU like device for the graphics. If the GPU supports a GPGPU solution such as OpenCL or CUDA you can do hardware acceleration of just about any codec. If you read the docs on a lot of these "hardware" solutions, especially for complex algorithms such as H.264, you realize the "hardware" is actually a beefed up general purpose computing unit hidden behind layers of proprietary firmware.

Besides none of this explains why Apple does not implement Theora on a general purpose device they control the hardware design from the bottom up - like the iPhone.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[cheesybagel]

Even Microsoft allowed you to install any browser you want on their platform.

What other Free codec?

[tepples]

It's also the same with Firefox and their rejection of anything but Theora

More like vice versa. Theora is an extension of VP3, the only codec whose patent holder (On2) has licensed it worldwide for use in software meeting the definition of free software. All other codec owners have rejected Firefox.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

Hmm, around the time of the change I definitely found old stuff still worked with flvstreamer, but new stuff needed rtmpdump + some hacking as described.

Your findings are very interesting and I can confirm the same thing (flvstreamer 1.8, Dr Who). Have the BBC rolled back on SWF Verification or is something else going on?

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[Paul Jakma]

I wonder is it just the higher resolutions that are unavailable? I can download 640x373 (default and --mode flashhigh) and also 832x468 (flashvhigh mode). I can't get the flashhd mode though.

Re:HTML5 will be a screw job.

[maxwell demon]

Well - but if a h.265 licensee is sued for patents which concern the video codec, the other licensees and the MPEG-LA members will be threatened too, and those last-ones have a huge portfolio of other patents which they can use to force and protect them-selfs and their paying customers.

Unless the patent holder is a patent troll who doesn't produce anything and therefore can't violate a patent himself (unless someone in the MPEG-LA has a business patent on patent trolling, that is).