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Mozilla Debates Supporting H.264 In Firefox Via System Codecs
An anonymous reader writes "Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of a universal video format that is supported in all browsers. Mozilla previously rejected the popular H.264 video codec because it is patent-encumbered and would require implementors to pay royalty fees. The organization is now rethinking its position and is preparing to add support for H.264 video decoding in mobile Firefox via codecs that are provided by the underlying operating system or hardware. The controversial proposal has attracted a lot of criticism from Firefox contributors, including some employed by Mozilla."
If the purpose of Mozilla is to provide high-quality, standards-compliant products, then this is the smart move. If the purpose is to advocate for all things open source, then this is a bad move. The project is made up of people from both those camps, so there is going to be much gnashing of teeth over this, and the mandate from on high without discussing it isn't going to make it any more pleasant.
Nevertheless, Google's lack of commitment to removing h.264 from Chrome doesn't help. Maybe Google could buy MPEG-LA and end this nonsense once and for all?
Or pay $$$ for proprietary tools for developing websites.
One of the reasons I hated flash was the web was no longer open. 10 years ago you could use Linux to develop web pages because it had cool xml, php, database and other tools. Then flash and Adobe came around and turned it into a win32 and to a much lesser extent mac platform.
All the good candidates with the right skills had these $2,000 tools as HR check listed flash, flex, dreamweaver, illustrator, etc.
I view h.264 as another tie in to expensive tools that force you to pirate and not update your own pc just be job competitive. That is against the spirit of the web. No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
http://saveie6.com/
It only stands to reason that if you're using standard system APIs to access codecs that have been purchased or installed by the user/owner, then ALL of those codecs should be usable, not just the free ones.
What's the point of having a general purpose browser if you let it get polluted by political arguments about which codecs the USER installs? Using system codecs is not "polluting the code" -- it's letting the user decide.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I say pick the Best even if that means a few years of payments.
Except that the standards will be updated in a few years to support the next patent-encumbered format. You are missing the broader picture here: fighting against math^H^H^H^Hsoftware patents.
Palm trees and 8
In just a few years the royalty fees will expire and H.264 will be just as open as any other codec.
How few is a few? If I'm not mistaken, the patents on H.264 date back to the 2000s, and will still be enforceable for another 10 years or more. Which I guess is "a few years" in the grand scheme of things, but given the pace of Firefox version numbers, we're looking at Firefox 50.0 at least before H.264 is patent-free.
And that's just in the US. I have no idea how long the various parts of it are patented in other countries.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
DRM has nothing to do with it. XP does not include a software H.264 decoder because it didn't exist at the time XP was released.
Google promised they'd drop H.264 in Chrome... and then never did. Recent queries about the state of that promise are met with curious silence.
XP supports h.264 just fine. You can get lots of h.264 decoders and encoders for XP. It's just that Microsoft hasn't extended licensing of h.264 to XP (it costs money).
The DRM thing is a non-issue. "Protected Path" is a DRM technology for use in specific use cases - e.g., playing back Blu-Ray movies, where a software playback app MUST use measures to protect the stream. So if you want to play back Blu-Ray, you need Vista or Win7.
Heck, XP plays h.264 just fine - if you ever view YouTube videos in 720p or 1080p (and sometimes 480p) YouTube is sending you an h.264 stream.
h.264 has nothing to do with copyrights - it's just that the algorithm uses a lot of patented technologies and it's the patents that require paying royalties to use (you can make agreements with every patent holder, or just pay a flat fee to the MPEG-LA). The mateiral encoded in h.264 is copyrighted.
So an XP user has at least three ways to play back an h.264 video without spending a dime. First would be Flash player which includes h.264 support for videos. Second is iTunes/QuickTime which provides its own h.264 decoder for free. Third is to install VLC.
This page has a list of H.264 patents. The last one expires in 2028, but from an extremely brief glance it doesn't look encoder-related. Last relevant one might be 2027; it has a 1215 day extension.
Those companies didn't have to implement WebM because they already had implemented H.264. In format wars Johnny-come-lately = also-ran. Plus why use a competitors' format, WebM, when you can use your own ? People are quick to call "patent trap" when Microsoft releases something "open", but when it's Google everyone has to trust blindly ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
"Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of (software vendors like Microsoft and Apple implementing WebM)" is closer to reality
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla
Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Not to mention that for mobile devices, in many cases the hardware support for WebM is missing. H.264 is what almost all cameras record in now. H.264 is what professionals use in BluRays etc. H.264 is what pirates tend to use. Almost everybody, everywhere is using H.264, apart from the WebM beta on YouTube I haven't seen it used anywhere. Firefox represents one web browser, zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM. The rest of the world will continue to work with H.264, while Firefox is worked around with Flash/H.264 until Mozilla either changes their mind or becomes irrelevant. Which I suppose is the case on mobile, I can't even find them on the mobile browser stats.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I have some bad news for you: if you own a smart phone you already have paid because it contains a H.264 hardware decoder that's licensed. Now what's wrong with Mozilla using that existing hardware to get some decent performance instead of using an outside codec that will lead to lousy performance and worse battery life on the meagre content that's available to it ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
How few? In 2027.
Summary: http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2_H_264/
Patent break-down: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_patents
To quote the summary
H.264 is a newer video codec. The standard first came out in 2003, but continues to evolve. An automatically generated patent expiration list is available at H.264 Patent List based on the MPEG-LA patent list. The last expiration is US 7826532 on 29 nov 2027 ( note that 7835443 is divisional, but the automated program missed that). US 7826532 was first filed in 05 sep 2003 and has an impressive 1546 day extension. It will be a while before H.264 is patent free.
I'm sure it'll be implemented in Firefox 19, due to be released next week.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
The only people who will impliment native support for h264 are those who hold the patents themselves - and they will refuse to support anything else.
Mozilla already plays H264 video embedded in flash contents through an external flash plugin. Today.
So why would it be controversial to allow another plugin to do the same?
)9TSS
Right, and they didn't need to implement PNG because they had already implemented GIF.
Hang on, Microsoft did actually try that one! That was a great time for the Internet wasn't it?
They shouldn't "support H.264" but rather, they should support any unknown (to the browser) codec by trying the OS.
There are two different issues going on here, and the Mozilla team got one of them right and one of them wrong.
Let VDPAU/VA-API/whatever deal with it. All of it, and Mozilla won't have to maintain Theora or WebM code, either. Then they can get back to hunting for memory leaks. ;-)
They won't, just like they don't know that now. Stuff will fail. And if when does, maybe the browser can tell the user to get off their ass and go vote for a change.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hmm? nVidia, Intel, AMD, ImaginationTech, Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia, ...
Right... every single hardware and software vendor out there other than mozilla clearly has a vested interest...
List of H.264 licensors :
Apple Inc., Cisco Systems Canada IP Holdings Company, Cisco Technology, Inc., DAEWOO Electronics Corporation, Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, France Télécom, société anonyme*, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. , Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd., JVC KENWOOD Corporation*, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, INC., Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Polycom, Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sedna Patent Services, LLC, Sharp Corporation, Siemens AG, Sony Corporation, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Toshiba Corporation
List of companies supporting WebM:
Google, Mozilla
All the above companies can make use of H.264 knowing they won't get screwed because they are on the inside. What guarantee do they have they won't get screwed by some patent covering some of WebM ? A lot are competing directly or indirectly with Google, what guarantee do they have Google won't screw them ? A lot of those companies are developing hardware right now that has existing H.264 hardware decode and/or encode support (already an industry standard), what would they gain by throwing that away and starting from scratch and coming to market god knows when ? Face it: WebM hasn't got, and never had, a shot. Either it's a cheap viral marketing campaign for Google or someone up there is pretty deluded about their clout in the tech world.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I view h.264 as another tie in to expensive tools that force you to pirate and not update your own pc just be job competitive. That is against the spirit of the web. No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
The hell kind of reasoning is that? Have you ever actually tried creating a webpage? H.264 is not proprietary. The only thing that even touches H.264 is your video encoder. You probably already have one, and if not, there are plenty of good ones out there that you can use.
What is H.264 forcing you to pirate, exactly? How is H.264 preventing you from updating your PC? Why can no free tools exist? Have you read the actual license on MPEG-LA's website?
Though it's been over a year and the codec is still supported, Google announced they plan to drop support of H.264 in the future. Opera also does not support H.264. Moving forward, I would wager that Google will phase out H.264 in favor of WebM on mobile devices as well. Google seems to be taking a more cautious approach of keeping H.264 support for now and hoping WebM catches on eventually before dropping it entirely.
In this case, I would be willing to be that the reason is that the pirate groups have now made x264 the defacto standard for standard definition TV. AVI is falling by the wayside, and therefore Mozilla is just keeping up with the tech savvy of the interwebs. http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-pirates-go-nuts-after-tv-release-groups-dump-xvid-120303/
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla
And Opera
Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
Except that PNG is objectively better than GIF, while WebM is objectively worse than h.264.
These changes will occur in the next couple months
Posted over a year ago, and guess what, h.264 is still there.
WebM supporters: Free Software Foundation, Participatory Culture Foundation, Xiph, Android, Codecian, Collabora, CoreCodec, Digital Rapids, FFmpeg, Adobe Flash Player, Flumotion Services, Google Chrome, Grab Networks, iLink, Inlet Technologies, Oracle Java, Matroska, Moovida, Mozilla, ooVoo, Opera, Oracle, Harmonic Rhozet, Skype, SightSpeed, Sorenson, Telestream, Tixeo, Ucentrik, VideoLAN, Wildform, Winamp Media Player, Wowza Media Server, XBMC Media Center, Allwinner Tech, AMD, Anyka, ARM, Broadcom, Chinachip, Chips&Media, C2 Microsystems, DSP Group, Freescale, GeneralPlus, Hisilicon, Hydra Control Freak, Imagination Technologies, Shanghai InfoTM Microelectronics, Leadcore Technology, Logitech, Marvell, MIPS, MStar Semiconductor, nVidia, Qualcomm, Rockchip Microelectronics, RayComm Group, SEUIC, Socle Technology Corp., ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Verisilicon, Videantis, ViewCast, ZiiLABS, ZTE Corporation, Anevia, Brightcove, Delve Networks, Encoding.com, EntropyWave, Flumotion Services, HD Cloud, HeyWatch.com, Kaltura, Media Core, MetaCDN, ooyala, Panda, Panvidea, Sorenson 360, thePlatform, VideoRX.com, VMIX, YouTube, Zencoder
No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
IANAL, but as far as I can tell, this statement is misleading.
First of all, almost all codecs are proprietary and licensed (including WebM), so you really need to look at the terms of the license to compare them.
Here's the WebM license.
Google hereby grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of this implementation of VP8, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8. This grant does not include claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further modification of this implementation. If you or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that this implementation of VP8 or any code incorporated within this implementation of VP8 constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any patent rights granted to you under this License for this implementation of VP8 shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Basically, free unless you or anyone you know sue anyone. In which case you don't get a license (the time-bomb provision).
The H.264 license is of course longer, but here is a brief summary of the relavent terms...
For (a) (1) branded encoder and decoder products sold both to End Users and on an OEM basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of a personal computer operating system (a decoder, encoder, or product consisting of one decoder and one encoder = “unit”), royalties (beginning January 1, 2005) per Legal Entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no royalty (this threshold is available to one Legal Entity in an affiliated group); US $0.20 per unit after first 100,000 units each year; above 5 million units per year, royalty = US $0.10 per unit. The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an Enterprise (commonly controlled Legal Entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5 million per year 2009-10, and $6.5 million per year in 2011-15....
In the case of Internet Broadcast AVC Video (AVC Video that is delivered via the Worldwide Internet to an End User for which the End User does not pay remuneration for the right to receive or view, i.e., neither Title-by-Title nor Subscription), there will be no royalty for the life of the License.
So although technical no free tool can exist (unless it was somehow capped at 100,000 units per year), a tool costing .20 cents or less is certainly possible, so I don't think "expensive" is really the right adjective to apply to it.
Basically, you don't have to pay anything at less than 100,000 units per year, and there's an upper cap on the amount you have to pay and you don't have a timebomb where if one of your customers decides to go sue crazy, it destroys your buisness. If you were a business person, which one would you pick? Of course not everyone is a business person, but as a freelance website developer, perhaps there is some sympathy with some business folk...
On the other hand the actual existance of "free" h.264 tools like x264, seems to disprove that fact that "no free tool can exist" (even if you debate the legality of x264, it's hard to debate its existance)...
And Opera
Actually, according to Opera itself:
Opera Mobile's support of particular video codecs is device-dependent: WebM and H.264 are supported, if available on the platform.
So Opera is not refusing to use the system codecs on mobile, like Firefox is.
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
Opera is practically insignificant on the desktop and they support H.264 on the mobile. And yes IE does support H.264 it's everything else they only support via plugins.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
And here's really the clue, there's no indication Google is actually doing any of these things. Chrome still ships with H.264 support, every Android phone ships with H.264 support, YouTube's WebM is in eternal beta while everything is standardizing on H.264. Mozilla has been standing on the other side waiting for Google to join them but they're not coming, it's like threatening to migrate from MS Office to LibreOffice to get a better price but in the end you're staying on MS Office anyway. And Mozilla is now standing there dumbfounded saying "but but but you said you were migrating". It's not Firefox and Google, it's just Firefox and wishful thinking.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No. WebM is technically worse than h.264. How much does that count is subjective.
Dilbert RSS feed
So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins.
Internet Explorer 9 supports two, and only two, codecs in the HTML5 video element. IE9 supports H.264 and it supports WebM if the codec has been installed. No other codecs are supported, not even, for example, Windows Media Video.
Assuming you mean Motoral Mobility, that's owned by Google, which gives everyone "a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, transfer, and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of this implementation of VP8", that applies to any patent owned by Google, including future patents.
So how exactly will they sue anyone?
Dilbert RSS feed
Now that Mozilla has decided to have Firefox look and behave almost exactly like Chrome, but without being as fast or memory-efficient as Chrome
This is correct. Firefox isn't as memory-efficient as Chrome. In fact, Firefox is more memory efficient than Chrome: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-17-firefox-10-ubuntu,3129-14.html
For one there isn't anything better out there. There are better formats on the horizon, but nothing out there now. They are all still in development. However the bigger thing is h.264 is good enough. We have something that can provide good quality at a data rate that is easy to deal with on modern connections. Good. Done. The problem we had before is there wasn't a standard that was true for. Everything (well pretty much) supported MPEG-1 but that takes way too high a bitrate to look good and doesn't handle high rez. WMV works quite well, but is only supported by Windows out of the box. Realmeadia requires a garbage proprietary player.
Well H.264 is coming with pretty much all new OSes. It is part of OS-X, Windows 7, many mobile devices, etc. Everything supports it. It looks good too. A 1mbps stream looks pretty good, even at 720p and that is low enough bitrate to make most connections happy.
As such it is going to be with us for a LONG time. Once you have good enough and widely supported, people will use it, and keep using it. That's why GIF stuck around for so long. Good enough quality, and supported in all browsers. PNG is only starting to really displace it.
Remember it isn't like some evil agency can just force people to new formats. I'm sure they'd like to but that's not how it works. It is all in what people want to use.
H.264/AVC/MPEG-2 Part 10/whatever you want to call it is going to be entrenched for awhile on account of all devices supporting it, cameras supporting it (AVCHD cameras are quite popular) Blu-rays supporting it, and so on.
So if the patents are expiring soon (I don't know, I haven't looked) then life is pretty good in terms of implementing it.
So the entire world needs to be shackled due to a few slackers? Let me introduce you to my friend, Harrison Bergeron...
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Okay, I just did some rough calculations on the support for HTML5 video codecs by browsers (source), weighted by browser market share (source via), including both desktop and mobile browsers. What I got was:
Theora: 41%
WebM: 37%
H.264: 41%
None: 40%
These numbers add up to more than 100% because some browsers support more than one codec. Looking at single codec support I get:
WebM and not H.264: 17%
H.264 and not WebM: 21%
What it amounts to is that FF + Opera(Desktop) have close to the same market share as IE9 + Safari (OSX & iOS), so they just about cancel each other out. IE9 market share is growing slowly (thanks to not supporting win XP), so there's still a couple of years for WebM to gain traction before declaring H.264 a sure winner for HTML5 video.
True. And WebM comes with an uncertain future as that same patent troll organization will probably come after the first well funded WebM implementer. At this point in time it is unknown whether they would succeed in showing that WebM violates any existing patents. However it is a virtual certainty that they will try and that it will be expensive to defend against. This is why folks like Microsoft and Apple have stayed away and simply said that they will use WebM if there is already a plug in on the system that implements it. Whoever writes and distributes that plug in gets to battle the wrath of the h.264 patent trolls.
Actually, a big reason Microsoft and Apple wont touch VP8 is that they hold H.264 patents and are members of the H.264 patent pool and that because of the extremely broad patent grant attached to VP8, supporting it would mean giving up the rights to use their patents as part of a future VP8 patent pool and extract money from those who ARE using VP8.
Being technically worse, when trying to win customers from a competitor which is already entrenched counts for everything. Really, other than pie in the sky idealism, there is zero reason to use WebM/VP8 - the content generation tools aren't there, inbuilt operating system/device support isn't there, and the CODEC itself is inferior. Other than for political reasons - which the average user has ZERO care for, it is lose-lose-lose. Thus, the average user won't use it.
If you want to win customers over, build something BETTER, not some half-assed attempt that has no hardware or commercial software support and due to inferior performance, never will do.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Actually, h.264 is "openly" patent encumbered, with a well known licensing policy. WebM/VP8 is on shaky legal ground; there is only google claiming it is "open" and "free". It has yet to be tested in court, and an analysis of the code/algorithm shows siginificant similarities.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This used to use SMB, but now it's the HomeGroup thing.
You don't have to add your Win7 PC to a homegroup. And if you don't do that, file and printer sharing works exactly the same as it did before.
Unfortunately, this just pushes the problem onto Linux as a whole: "We notice you have an unsupported OS. Please use Mac OS or Windows to legally view this content."
Fluendo sells properly licensed codecs for Linux, including H.264. I doubt they'd care about your OS so long as they get the fees one way or another.
While I agree that WebM is doomed already, I disagree with your generalized assertion that technically superiority is all that counts. Cost, for example, wins over technical superiority regularly.
Dilbert RSS feed
So I guess after you paid the h264 racket nobody else can come and sue you because of some unknown paten, rightt? Tought not.
I'm glad we don't have this kind of idiocy around here.
Rethinking email
all video formats come with the threat of a lawsuit from that cunt at MPEG-LA.
i say bring it the fuck on. when they try to defend their patent portfolio against google's lawyers (and any other vested interests that want to jump into the fray), they'll find their portfolio shrinking to the level their legitimacy hit years ago.
Thus, the average user won't use it.
BS. The "average" user will use whatever youtube, hulu, netflix, funnyordie, xtube, pornhub, etc etc spit out at them.
The past has had real player, quicktime, wmv, mpeg*, flash (with multiple video codecs), silverlight (multiple codecs), etc etc etc etc. Neither WebM nor h.264 is going to be the format to end all formats.
We're down to only two formats now in this spec. This should be easily fixed with a combo of:
a) let the browser support both via plugins of some sort (or OS media layer calls)
b) let the site detect and send the supported format.
Maybe that's not ideal, but your average user won't give a rats ass. h.264 has the technical/performance edge, and WebM has the open edge... there is no clear winner (you may define one, but others obviously do not). There's no point in wasting any more time arguing about it until h.264 clears the patent roadblocks or WebM catches up in hardware and software support.... just plan to support both, and ALL your users will be happy.
Well that sounds like "head in the sand" to me. From someone qualified who has analyzed the code in detail:
If google was confident they were in the clear, they wouldn't be stuffing clauses in the license to the effect of "if this code infringes, you're on your own!".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You missed the "already entrenched" bit. Everyone already has h.264. Being "free" doesn't matter, as people already have a superior alternative that they are using (to decode) for free.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Your post isn't inherently FUDdy, but it becomes so by being so one-sided. You're right, Google doesn't offer any indemnity to users of VP8. But MPEG LA doesn't offer any indemnity to users of H.264, either. If the codecs are similar, then both are at risk of trollish lawsuits.
Rather than moving away from it, Skype has been adding support for VP8 over the last year:
Yes, they upgraded from V7 to it's newer version WebM, née V8, + h.264. Wikipedia :
"VP7 is used for versions prior to Skype 5.5. As of version 5.7 VP8 is used for both group and one on one standard definition video chat and H264 is used for 720p and 1080p high definition group and one on one video chat."
And of course this was reported as Skype moving to WebM. That's technically correct I guess (the best kind of correct) but you'll see that where there was one, there are now two and the part that's the future, HD quality video, is in h.264. That that's counted as a win is indicative of just how much WebM advocates are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Cost is a part of technical superiority. If something is way too expensive, it cannot be "technical superior".
H.264 is not proprietary.
Give it a rest. Can you use it freely without permission? No? Then it's proprietary. End of story.
The fact that it owned by a cartel rather than a single company is irrelevant.
The video you generate comes out of your devices in h.264, for which the manufacturers are already paying a royalty. Now if you then want to generate some actual content, using the raw video, then you now have to pay a license unless you use WebM. There is no "winner", as a poster above pointed out the user will just use the format the provider spits out, the codec used will just be a balance of cost versus convenience. It's not that big a deal to use WebM instead of h.264 for general use, and pay a license to generate mobile content which you generally charge a premium for until WebM reaches the same hardware acceleration as h.264.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
All the video I generate comes out of my devices in h.264
If you look in your device's manual, you will see some small print that says that you may not use this output for commercial purposes without buying an additional license from the MPEG-LA.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think that's the most ridiculous straw man I've ever read on Slashdot. No piece of software or algorithm ever created has been tested in court and found not to infringe on anyone else's patents. At most, it can be tested in court and found not to infringe a specific set of patents. So far, in spite of the fact that the MPEG-LA started trying to create a pool of patents that VP8 infringed two years ago, no VP8 user or distributor has been involved in a patent lawsuit over VP8 and the MPEG-LA has not produced a single patent that VP8 is alleged to infringe.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No, I don't think you can do the HW acceleration for other formats easily, probably not at all.
And HW acceleration is important, because of battery life of many devices, laptops, mobiles, tablets.
New things are always on the horizon