Breaking Open the Video Frontier, Despite MPEG-LA

JimLynch writes "Did you know that nearly every video produced for Web viewing has been, at one point or another, in MPEG format no matter in what format the video is ultimately saved? According to Chris 'Monty' Montgomery, nearly every consumer device outputs video in MPEG format. Which means that every software video decoder has to have MPEG-licensed technology in order to process/edit video." An interesting snippet: "But there's hope on the horizon. Besides the codecs and formats from the Xiph.Org Foundation, the new WebM format announced by Google in May will ideally provide consumers and developers with another alternative. Montgomery has thrown Xiph.Org support behind WebM, because Google's financial muscle (not to mention their free license) will have a real chance to break the hold MPEG-LA has on the market."

Comments

Re:WebM is not the solution

[Endymion]

Normally, yes, that's a great idea. But in this case, fighting H.264 is going to drive normal, non-technical people away and into the waiting arms of non-free software.

Fighting for an open codec isn't worth it, if it destroys the market share of Firefox in the meantime.