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

[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.

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?

youtube

[alabandit]

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

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...

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.

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: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.

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.

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.