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Mozilla Adds H.264 Support To Android Firefox
sl4shd0rk writes "Chris Double of the Mozilla developer team has (H.264, AAC and MP3) working with the Android version of Firefox on a Nexus S handset. Although a preliminary patch, it looks like it is on track to be included in Firefox 17, which will enter the Aurora channel at the end of the month. It will be some time before being made available to users, so hang in there. A very welcome addition. Thanks Chris!"
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/15/1441200/adobe-officially-kills-new-flash-installations-on-android ....
who where what when now?
No offense, but what happened to the "WebM is super double plus good, and all we're gonna nom-nom on" dogma that was touted? I'm happy that they are adding support for H.264, but after all this baby mama drama, what was the point? I'm wondering what happened internally to reverse this choice. Was it a matter of "the world has moved on" or "we're just gonna make the best UX possible" that drove the decision?
Help me, help you. - Jerry McGuire
"Mozilla decided that, where available, Firefox should take advantage of the media decoding capabilities supplied by the underlying hardware and operating system. This approach means that Mozilla won’t have to license patent-encumbered codecs or include built-in decoders in the browser—it can just use the decoding capabilities that are already present in relevant environments."
Given that the vast majority of smartphones seem to be based on SoCs with hardware h.264 decoding as an option, usually turned on, I suspect that it is largely a dead issue on the mobile side. Nobody can really afford to not support it at all, full stop, that capability stubbed out in the little crypto blob that controls the hardware decoder; and once you've enabled it, there is minimal additional complexity(and no legal entanglement) for Mozilla or anybody else who wishes to ask the decoder to do some decoding.
On the desktop, where hardware decoding cannot be as reliably depended upon, or in relatively closed embedded systems where cost is a major factor, there might still be room.
(Alternately, it could be that Google doesn't really give a damn about formats, they just care about licensing fees, and only need WebM to be plausible enough to keep the MPEG-LA running a little bit scared, not enough to run them into the ground, which is likely too expensive to be cost effective.)
refreshing.
Google is trying to sneak WebM in through the back door by making it a mandatory codec for WebRTC - which would, coincidentally, make it the *only* mandatory codec for the next generation of web technologies (HTML5, WebRTC et al)...
Thats why you haven't heard anything from Google - they've switched to stealth mode and are trying to do an end run around the opposition.
Distributing software that can decode H.264 costs money.
Making H.264 the de facto standard means only rich companies will be able to develop web browsers (or other devices/services that play H.264).
Would we have had the same amount of competition if other web formats/standards required paying licenses? (stuff like JPG, PNG, GIF, JS, ...)
This is not a battle we can win.
Everyone is using h.264. Not supporting it just makes your product inferior as it won't support as many websites as one that does.
We are just going to have to deal with it. Eventually the patents will expire and it will no longer be a problem; we just have to make the mistake of not choosing an encumbered standard NEXT TIME once h.264 is obsolete.
on the desktop both windows and osx have an integrated h264 decoder, on linux is probably just a matter of installing ffmpeg or something like that
People who want a refuge while Chrome's pepper-flash is un unstable lump?
Im just happy they finally have their update system finally in order.
XP doesn't, not sure about Vista(and there may be some ghastly mess with 'business' and 'home basic' vs. 'home premium' or some nonsense).
Generally, though, the bet among pragmatists seems to be that, sooner or later, Mozilla will go down the 'just expose platform's preferred media decode system' road(though that would increase the amount of platform specific code, and would actually gimp support for things like webM and ogg vorbis/FLAC, since those tend not to show up by default in quicktime or directshow). Mobile is an unsurprising starting point, since the delta(in performance and battery life) between hardware decoded and software decoded-on-some-horrid-little-ARM is so dramatic; but the bet seems to be that the desktop version will probably go that way at some point.
XP does/did. Every Nvidia card and integrated chipset with onboard video made since 2004 has had h.264 hardware decoding included, with the exception of the 6100 made around the same time.
Try Opera. Seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
About 20% of all internet users. That's about 1.3 billion people.
Mine's been running since this morning with 6 tabs open and is sitting right at 1.6GB.
We are just going to have to deal with it. Eventually the patents will expire and it will no longer be a problem; we just have to make the mistake of not choosing an encumbered standard NEXT TIME once h.264 is obsolete.
Doubtful, the work on HEVC is already in draft status and will probably be submitted for final approval in January 2013. That said, the significance is going down, for example I don't think many people outside technical communities care much about MP3 vs AAC vs OGG Vorbis anymore. With fiber and other superbroadband rolling out H.264 vs HEVC might not make that huge a difference. I know at least with myself that I manage to download everything I want just fine with H.264, sure it'd be nice if it took half the bandwidth and half the disk space but it's not revolutionary.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings