Microsoft Makes Chrome Play H.264 Video

nk497 writes "Chrome users will be able to play H.264 video — thanks to Microsoft. The software giant today unveiled the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which will let users of the Google browser play H.264 video after it was dropped from Chrome over licensing issues. 'At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the internet in H.264 format,' said Claudio Caldato, Microsoft interoperability program manager."

Comments

Poetic Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

For when Chrome did the same for Internet Explorer

And

[unity100]

will it report which videos i choose to watch on youtube to microsoft ? so that they can use it to 'improve their results' in any potential video service they may be launching, depending on what youtube shows ?

Ogg Theora has no technical merit over H.264

[Kohath]

Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology.

Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else? Why, especially, should they want their users to have a much worse experience watching internet video?

How about adopting (or adapting) a belief system that leads to better products instead of worse ones?

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[commodore6502]

>>>Theora is also quite useful

Yes it is, but I think HE-AAC (plus SBR) is more useful. It can provide CD quality as low as 48k and AM quality as low as 12k. Give it a try: http://www.radiojackie.com/listennowpage.asp

Neither MP3 or Theora can touch it. And yes I have to pay an extra penny or whatever for my AACplus player, but the better sound quality for small files is worth it. (Same reasoning goes for why I prefer MPEG4 video over VP8 or MPEG2.)

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[Omnifarious]

I consider H.264 support in any browser to be of negative utility. It encourages the prevalence of a heavily patent encumbered format on the Internet, which is bad for everybody, except possibly a few large players like Microsoft (though ultimate I don't think it's in their best long-term interests either).

So, in my opinion, they just added a freedom exploit to a previously useful browser.