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

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.

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: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.

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:Priorities

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

With one hand

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