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

And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[eldavojohn]

"At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web"

Ohhh, right, that's why Ogg Theora isn't natively supported in Internet Explorer. Maybe you could concentrate on improving the support, capabilities and experience in your own browser before bothering to extend other browsers?

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[node 3]

Adding support for H.264 is actually useful, unlike Theora support. Also, it's largely a game of upsmanship, basically saying, "here Google, we fixed your browser for you".

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[zn0k]

Anything that increases choice is a good thing.

It's not like there isn't a very well documented interface to IE. Why don't you write an Ogg Theroa plugin for IE, rather than complain that Microsoft wrote something that is both in their interest and useful for users that do want to use h.264 as well as use Chrome?
Or use the VLC media player plugin, which - at least according to the Wikipedia page on Theroa - lets you view that format in IE and Firefox.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Theora is also quite useful, given that the Wikimedia projects only accept free formats. You're not going to be able to upload your video in H.264 there, and they're a big enough player for this to actually matter.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[grimsnaggle]

But nobody uses Ogg Theora.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[alen]

code an activeX plugin and you should be OK

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[shentino]

If they made a stink about it back then they might not have gotten any traction. You don't throw stones when you're in glass houses unless you want to have a rain of glass shards cutting you to smithereens before you have a chance to lay a decent stack of bricks.

Something about not cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[zn0k]

Or it increases user's choice in regard to browsers as users who don't care about the patent background of video formats can now choose to use Chrome without losing the ability to watch h.264 videos.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[nschubach]

...on Windows machines.

That's really what's it's about (IMHO) Microsoft would rather keep you using pay/patent protected codecs because they can slip them in on a bulk license while keeping other alternative OSes (mainly Linux) from having that support (for legality/monetary reasons.)

If an open codec were popular, anyone could use it and people may not miss Windows support for 'X' codec that isn't available elsewhere.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[poetmatt]

adding extensions to chrome is actually horrible, unlike theora support. It's largely a game of making the browser less secure, basically saying "please install this microsoft sanctioned addon into chrome to make your browser more vulnerable".

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[nschubach]

The problem with this approach is that Microsoft pushes the plugin they wrote out to all those chrome users on Windows.

Will they push my ActiveX plugin to allow alternative formats in IE to all their users as well?

There's a definite imbalance of power there. One one side, the users are going to get it (usually in some obscure patch message: "Improve Internet Explorer experience.") and the other; the user has to go out and manually obtain the plugin.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[node 3]

Theora is also quite useful, given that the Wikimedia projects only accept free formats. You're not going to be able to upload your video in H.264 there, and they're a big enough player for this to actually matter.

Not even close. I've never, ever, received a link to a video on wikipedia (or any other wikimedia project). Ever. I bet most people aren't even aware that there *are* videos on wikipedia.

If they were big enough to matter, people would already be installing Theora plug-ins or switching over to browsers like Firefox in order to view Theora videos. You'd hear iPhone and other smartphone users complaining about lack of Theora support. There would be how-tos on playing Theora content. Etc.

None of this is happening. Wikipedia itself is pretty huge, but their impact on the multimedia market is insignificant.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[node 3]

Yes, it is an open standard. And yes, it contains patented technology. It is not a free standard.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[zach_the_lizard]

And now you can't make any opensource implementation of it. That's why Theora and the like are useful; everyone is free to implement it.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[adamstew]

Because audible files are DRM'd It may support the codec, but you also need to support the encryption/decryption method as well.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[SuricouRaven]

Because, although it supports the codec, it does not support the container. Audible's .AA files are propritary, and undocumented. They also use DRM measures, though I don't know how sophisticated these are.

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.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[icebike]

Adding support for H.264 is actually useful, unlike Theora support. Also, it's largely a game of upsmanship, basically saying, "here Google, we fixed your browser for you".

Upsmanship?

More like feathering ones own nest.
After all, Microsoft is a member of the H.264 Licensors. They stand to profit by the continued adoption of H.264.

Actually, I can't even see Google getting all fussed about this, because they will not have to pay a license fee in 2016 because its not part of Chrome proper. Microsoft may not need to pay either, since as members they may get a free pass (just speculation on my part there).

It isn't about Theora, and there are potential third party patent claims against Theora too.

The whole point Google Still, there is no reason to run head long into H.264 believing there will be no end to the free use of this rat's nest of patents. Did we learn nothing during the GIF saga? With the time available, the orderly move away from H.264 is clearly the way to go.

So view this Microsoft offering for what it is, not so much as a shot across Google's bow as it is a way of protecting their own pocketbook, even at the expense of their own browser offering. Its all about the future revenue.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[Arrawa]

The video content will grow quite rapidly, now that several big archives are donating stuff for use in Wikipedia (like he German Bundesarchiv and the Dutch Nationaal Archief). For now, primararly thousands and thousands of photo's, but it is strange to think that video's will follow soon? Also media outlets like Al Jazeera are distributing material with a cc-license. (cc.aljazeera.net). Wikipedia will be a big player with the video-content soon enough.

Re:And Yet, No Ogg Theora in IE

[Qubit]

Shouldn't Wikimedia accept WebM as well then?

According to the Commons:Video page, "WebM support will likely be added in the future. See this bug report for its current status."

The bug report described is #23888, and was last updated on 2010-08-24 -- over 5 months ago. It appears that there needs to just be some hacking done on MediaWiki to support it.

I think that this bug report is a perfect example of what needs to be done to give WebM the traction to take the upper hand in web video. Do you want support for WebM video in Gallery2 or Gallery3? Do you want support for WebM video in MediaWiki? How about Drupal, Plone, or Joomla? Or how about just plain-old mime-type support for WebM in Ubuntu?

Yes, there are projects underway to support WebM in these FOSS projects, but nearly all of them aren't ready for daily use yet. If we want to see WebM deployed as the video format of choice for the web, we really need to step up and make sure that WebM is as supported as a video format as PNG and JPEG are supported as image formats.

Priorities

[ironicsky]

Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.

Yeah, it's almost as if Microsoft were a large company with a lot of developers assigned to a diverse range of products and tasks, where some developer's responsibilities don't overlap with the projects you seem to think they should be fixing bugs on.

Re:Priorities

[MHolmesIV]

Yes. Microsoft is a patent holder in the H.264 patent pool.

Re:Priorities

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

With one hand

Well I know what you're watching with your new plug-in...

Re:Priorities

[DragonWriter]

Microsoft has interesting priorities... "Lets release a plug-in for a third party browser to fix a perceived short coming..." as opposed to "Lets fix the problems and short comings in our products". Slow clap for Microsoft.

To be fair, Google has done that (in a much bigger way) for IE.

Re:Priorities

[marcosdumay]

Microsoft is clearly doing that to push H264 on the internet, with the intent of hurting free software, and creating a competitive edge for them. The fact that they'll pay for that doesn't make it less of a finantial incentive.

Re:Priorities

[Jonner]

Yes, their priority is clear in this case: to keep Google, Mozilla, Opera, and anyone else supporting WebM from gaining influence over web video. It's bad enough for MS that they've conceded their attempts to control it with their own formats are failing and they've backed MPEG-4. This is part of the same strategy that motivated them to make DotNet and MPEG-4 AVC add-ons for Firefox.

Poetic Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

For when Chrome did the same for Internet Explorer

Re:Poetic Justice

[WhiteDragon]

Soes this work with Chrome Frame running in IE running in IE Frame running in Firefox running in WINE running in Linux running in Virtual Box running on Windows?

no, because the firefox extension is called IE Tab (or IE Tab Plus), not IEFrame. Still, it would be interesting if someone tries it.

Memory Leak

[Utopia]

Microsoft's H.264 addon for Firefox has a bad memory leak.
See http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/971988-memory-leak-in-html5-extension-for-windows-media-player-firefox-add-on/

So this might be bad for Chrome.

Re:Memory Leak

[alvinrod]

Well there's that, the intensive CPU usage, kernel panics, and it giving you cancer.

But it's still better than Flash.

Re:Memory Leak

[phizi0n]

It also causes Firefox to ask if you want to save tabs every time you close a window (like popups) which is incredibly annoying.

http://support.mozilla.com/ak/questions/669132

OS

[truthsearch]

I still believe that every browser should rely on the codecs installed on the OS. Every platform (and optionally the user) can then choose what they want.

Re:OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you do believe that way, H.264 has no place in Open Web (nor in HTML standard).

Re:OS

[dagamer34]

Businesses aren't going nor should they care if a format is open or not. They just want a reliable product to be delivered to their customers.

Re:OS

[mdielmann]

Businesses aren't going nor should they care if a format is open or not. They just want a reliable product to be delivered to their customers.

The one key issue with that statement is that if you release a royalty-encumbered product that you can't charge for, you're on the hook for some amount of money. Hence the push for open formats in web browsers, and why a company may be uninterested in producing a free product that opens them for lawsuits at some time in the future.

This isn't a problem for paid-for products, because you can purchase royalties for the patented technologies and it becomes part of the product cost. So goes the theory, anyway.

Re:OS

[rwv]

every browser should rely on the codecs installed on the OS

If browsers rely on OS codecs, then distributions of Linux would need to license H.264 and other proprietary codecs. The fact that these codecs are encumbered by patents (making them non-free) makes this an unlikely scenario.

Or would you, as a user, prefer to deal with purchasing licenses for every computer you want to install a particular codec onto? I doubt you would want this burden, so why suggest that Linux distributions should bare it?

Really... the winning solution (for users) is for a codec that is not encumbered by patents to become the de-facto standard. By enabling H.264 in Chrome on Microsoft platforms, Microsoft is trying to make a patent encumbered codec the de facto standard so that it (meaning Microsoft) can collect licensing fees in the future.

Re:OS

[Zelgadiss]

Well, not everyone sees it that way.

I don't see a downside to standardization to be honest.
JPEG, GIF, bitmaps are all support "voluntarily" but PNG on the other hand ...
Result? No one used it until recently. (if I'm right poor support in older versions of IE was what delayed adoption)

Re:OS

[spinkham]

Yes, if there was one high compression, cross platform, already in hardware, open standard, royalty free codec, it should totally be in the spec.
H.264 and WebM both fall down on different parts of those qualifications, so we get a turf war.

Translation

[blair1q]

"No way are we at Microsoft letting Chrome users off the hook for autoplayed videos with our advertisements in them."

Remember Google bringing SVG to IE?

[infernalC]

Do you remember this: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/22/1246248/Google-Brings-SVG-Support-To-IE ?

I remember when Google announced the svgweb javascript library to enable SVG support in IE. That sort of reinforced the notion that Microsoft was playing catch-up in the browser technology arena. Microsoft is now, at least trying, I think, to present the appearance that Google is the company that is behind. Not to mention it doesn't hurt MS to have value added to Chrome when it runs on Windows. They're not going to make this happen for Chrome running on GNU/Linux.

Very few users will notice

[rsilvergun]

most end users don't keep windows up, they close them as soon as their down to avoid 'cluttering their desktops'. So it's not much of an issue.

Re:Downright evil

[shentino]

x264 is a patent trap whose teeth are so ginormous people are afraid to go near it.

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 ?

Re:Crap - the H.264 disease just got better

[tlhIngan]

As opposed to the patent unknown of WebM. Yeah, I'm sure people will jump right on that bandwagon!

A major worry actually given how the patent system is. Right now we think WebM is patent free (and it would be nice if it was - c'mon Google, don't you trust your engineers?), but you can bet everyone is quietly sitting on their patents and seeing where this WebM thing is leading. If it proves successful, you strike. But never before - let it be established and essential, then you strike so everyone has no choice but license your patent (or fight you).

That's a problem, these submarine patents.

And those of you claiming that you're in a software-patent free-zone, well, then you're technically in the clear about using h.264 as well since its patents wouldn't be valid, either.

Damned if you do (h.264 patents are recognized and that means WebM is also vulnerable), and damned if you don't (if h.264 patents aren't recognized, then yes, WebM is free, but so is h.264).

It's also a reason why WebM's spec is really source code - because it's close to h.264, alternative implementations may infringe on h.264 (or you use your already-paid-for h.264 licenses...).

Re:Downright evil

[A beautiful mind]

Bullshit. Let me break it down:

Patent risk from submarine patents: neither h.264 nor WebM offers any protection from it.

Patent risk from MPEG-LA for h.264: significant, as it can decide to raise prices / start charging for content at any time. Bait and switch is their strategy.

Patent risk from Google for WebM: none, they offered irrevocable indemnification:

Google hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable ⦠patent license to [infringe VP8 patents owned by Google].

Re:H.264 good. Not supporting it, bad. Good for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Office is the industry standard. Everyone should have a copy.

Re:Downright evil

[unity100]

264 IS a patent trap, and one of the trap owners is microsoft. this is why they are being so charitable in this occasion.

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:Ogg Theora has no technical merit over H.264

[Teckla]

Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264.

That may be so, but when comparing non-technical merits, is Ogg Theora highly superior to H.264? That should be part of the equation too.

All it has going for it is religion and ideology.

Troll.

Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else?

Because it might be better for users.

Why, especially, should they want their users to have a much worse experience watching internet video?

Even the latest version of Microsoft's browser (IE8) is a piece of shit. Microsoft has already demonstrated that the user experience is not their top priority.

That means one must wonder what Microsoft's true motivation is.

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

Oh, so you advocate moving away from IE entirely?

Re:Ogg Theora has no technical merit over H.264

[10101001 10101001]

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

And? Windows comes bundled with tons of old, obsolete, and inferior codecs, many of which never were mainstream in any reasonable sense of the word. Either Microsoft is for giving more choices or its for technological superiority. Yes, it's not black and white, but it's also the case that Theora being free makes the lack of inclusion either a sign of a choice on their part or a belief that Theora is so underused that it ranks below a ton of old codec; that's a little hard to believe.

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?

Because they said they were for choice and choice inherently involves trade-offs? Or are you suggesting Microsoft should drop support for everything but H.264? I mean, if it's all about quality per bit, then H.264 is the current best technology.

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

The second I see Microsoft chose and endorse a competitor's product because it's superior, we'll talk. As it stands, Microsoft's action seems more an attempt to ingratiate themselves with H.264 supporters while simultaneously mocking Google and Chrome. That's certainly their right and choice. But, it's not about generally giving more choice to the user. I'd be happier if Microsoft would just be honest and say they believe Google made a bad choice.

Re:Ogg Theora has no technical merit over H.264

[Dutch Gun]

I think you misunderstand the function of a lossy codec's decoder. The decoder isn't guaranteed to reproduce the exact input data no matter what. It's producing output based on an approximation of the original data. If the reference decoder can be tweaked to produce a better representation of the original data, then great! The bitstream (the format) stability is what's important. Updating the reference decoder is a good thing as they make optimizations and improvements to quality. Likewise updating an encoder to more efficiently encode and improve visual quality.

Also, ALL complex software is liable to having bugs in it. So, you're saying that declaring something as a reference means it can't have any bugs? Your argument here is sort of odd... I don't get what your beef is.

Re:H.264 good. Not supporting it, bad. Good for MS

[Ash-Fox]

H.264 is the standard. Browsers should play it.

Not really, flash is the standard. Barely nothing uses the video tag out there and the places that do offer currently flash support over it. The biggest provider of video tag content (youtube), while not enabled by default provides the majority of that content in webm only for the video tag.

Thus, I wouldn't even say h.264 is the 'standard' for video tags either.

Can Microsoft resist added monkey business?

[erroneus]

We have seen in the past how well the .net for Firefox stuff went over. It caused all sorts of uproar, confusion and problems.

Will Microsoft be releasing the source code for this plug-in so that we can properly trust it? I doubt it. And will there be a 3 mile long EULA attached to it? Almost certainly! Will it be hard to remove? Probably. I make these assumptions because we have seen this from Microsoft before. So unless they explicitly say they will do this any other way, we can presume they will do it the way they always have... and no, they will not support a Linux version of the plugin and not likely MacOSX.

So in summary:

1. It will be incomplete
2. It will be closed
3. It will be hard to remove
4. It may not be "optional"
5. It will cause problems with the browser and maybe the OS.

Re:Crap - the H.264 disease just got better

[Zelgadiss]

To my knowledge a H.264 licence doesn't protect you from all lawsuits either - just the ones in the MPEG patent pool.

If some troll refuses to join the patent pool and goes around suing people, MPEG and friends won't be lifting a finger to help anyone.

Re:Downright evil

[Kjella]

It's really much simpler. Windows 7 and OS X has already licensed the codec, Microsoft has absolutely nothing to lose by pushing it. Firefox has problems with it, Linux has problems with it. When there's so few competitors, pushing them down is as good as lifting yourself up. Not to mention in public perception they don't want it to look like Google is leading the pack and Microsoft tagging along. There's so many political and strategical reasons to do it that far outweigh the minimal patent royalties they get.