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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!"
"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.
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no longer be a problem; we just have to make the mistake of not choosing an encumbered standard NEXT TIME once h.264 is obsolete.