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

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

[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.

Poetic Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

For when Chrome did the same for Internet Explorer

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".

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: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.

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

[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: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

[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.

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: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: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: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: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.

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.