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Microsoft Going Its Own Way On Audio/Video Specification
An anonymous reader writes "Several groups are currently working on specifications for plugin-free, real-time audio and video communication. The World Wide Web Consortium has one called WebRTC, rudimentary support for which is found in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Back in August, Microsoft announced its own specification, CU-RTC-Web, because it thought WebRTC wasn't worthwhile. W3C carried out a vote to choose between the two specs, which came out strongly in favor of WebRTC. Microsoft went ahead anyway, and it has now published a prototype for the proposed specification. 'So what's Microsoft playing at, persevering with its own spec in spite of its rejection by the WebRTC group? The company's argument is twofold. First, WebRTC simply isn't complete yet, and Microsoft believes that working on its proposal can shed light on how to solve certain problems such as handling changes in network bandwidth or keeping cellular and Wi-Fi connections open in parallel to allow easy failover from one to the other. Even if Redmond's spec isn't adopted wholesale, portions of it may still be useful. Second, the company believes that WebRTC may not be as close to real standardization as its proponents might argue.'"
Does anybody even care what Microsoft does these days? They even seem to fail at being evil, though they still try.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Microsoft has followed this path from the beginning with standards: Adopt, adapt, expand and control.
Always adding something "extra" so that other software that actually follows the standard doesn't work quite right with stuff built to Microsoft's "standard" so that the stuff built to actually follow the world standard looks inferior. :(
--Tomas
No one use IE any more.
Sure they do. They don't have the majority numbers they used to have back in the old Netscape days, but they still have market share. Any web developer worth their salt will at least use IE for testing purposes (if you're developing websites, not testing in IE for whatever reason, then you suck as a developer). I also know several people personally who use IE because it's what they're used to, and they're not power users (they have difficulty learning unfamiliar programs on their own). Even after I've spoken to them and advocated the use of Firefox (or of late, I'd advocate Chrome), they chose to continue using IE.
I'm not saying that IE is the best browser out there (although they have made great strides in standards compliance and security since the days of IE6), but to state "no one uses IE anymore" with no facts to back it up is simply short-sighted and borderline zealous.
FC Closer
Any web developer worth their salt will at least use IE for testing purposes
If you write to the standards you don't need to test in IE any more than any other browser.
If IE can't handle standard code, its somebody else's problem.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Here you go: comic
I don't see any of these things happening at Microsoft, with this project, at this time. Sure, it may have happened in the past, but it's hardly a microsoft thing to do - all the big kids do it.
It is more a matter of history. Considering what they have done in the past, I am NOT ready to trust them. They are a pernicious monopoly that is now beginning to realize that they are threatened. They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
If IE can't handle standard code, its somebody else's problem.
Spoken like a man without clients/customers...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
FLAC does compress it just uses lossless compression.
They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Or maybe they are developing what they believe is better technology in a time frame better suited to their needs. I guess you see what you want to see. Yes, they have a spotty past. If they neutered every project in fear of appearing anti-competetive, they would be dead in short order.
I've been balls deep in WebRTC server-side implementation for 2 months, and oh my god THE HORROR. I'll try to keep this short.
A bunch of telephony stalwarts were brought together to come up with some standards for interoperable, extendable, browser-based real-time media communications. To achieve this aim, they've taken several dozen existing standards & RFCs, and extended / contorted / selectively ignored / creatively implemented them such that they've inherited two decades of digital telephony industry technical debt, gaining absolutely nothing in return.
The bar of implementation has been set so high and so complex the average would-be WebRTC-endpoint-compatible implementor has very little hope of achieving anything without wholesale drinking of the kool-aid. Forget lightweight implementations, and forget being able to innovate around the technology. They've focused purely on the peer-to-peer aspect, entirely neglecting anybody who might want to create more complex topologies and server-side functionality.
The W3C need to reassess their decision to burden everybody with finnicky, complicated, nuanced, potholed standards born in a different time, where connectivity, devices, usage patterns and scalability were all nothing like they are today. They need to take stock of the number of design decisions they've made which fundamentally break compatibility with other implementations of the standards they've chosen. They need to realise this is all completely pointless work: they could have truly revolutionised this shit, for fucks sake!
As for Microsoft's direction: they seem to be attempting to address a few of these issues, but they've also committed the sin of overcompicating the fuck out of it.
I suppose you could be right. The odds are against it though. Microsoft is like the guy who has been married 10 times and cheated on every single bride. Now they are going to the altar again promising to be true this time. Want to bet on it?
I don't see any of these things happening at Microsoft, with this project, at this time. Sure, it may have happened in the past, but it's hardly a microsoft thing to do - all the big kids do it.
It is more a matter of history. Considering what they have done in the past, I am NOT ready to trust them. They are a pernicious monopoly that is now beginning to realize that they are threatened. They are starting to act like a cornered animal, trying to pull out many of their old monopolistic tricks out of their war chest.
Pfft. Who you gonna trust instead? Sony? Apple?
Pick your poison. They've all been abusive in their own special way, at once point or another.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
In the post Flash era we are taking HUGE steps back. In-browser support for Video Codecs are neither here nor there, where we quite literally have to encode to two or even three standards. But, at least we have Wowza that can stream to various standards and Codecs. Audio is no better, with Google and Apple are using the Web Audio API while Firefox is committed to the Audio Data API, which has NOTHING in common with the Webkit standard. And the built in audio player on the Android Browser? WHAT. A. FUCKING. JOKE. And of course Apple's "HTTP Live Streaming" is NOT at all suited for actual Live Streaming. The latency is terrible!
And then we have Real Time Communication, an area that Flash excelled at with and RTMP and AMF, as well as various servers such as FMS, Wowza and SmartFox capable of facilitating chat rooms, multi-player games, even MMORPGs.
Getting data and devices streaming FROM THE BROWSER just isn't there. The support is incomplete, undecided and very much in flux. We are quite literally still a few years out from a standard and usable platform across browsers. And now we have Microsoft wading in to offer what will surely be a typical Proprietary Solution only available to Microsoft Partners and Licensees.
Frankly, this rush to kill Flash has been a self-centered money grab to try to take away the video market from Adobe and HAS FUCKED the users, leaving them with a broken internet and competing standards.
The hype of HTML5 has been years coming, with Steve Jobs and legions of techies on slashdot and other sites calling for the death of Flash.
Yet here we are, years out and we don't have anywhere near what we had with Multi-Media and Real Time Communication in 2005 with Flash.
How anyone can sit here and look at the current state of affairs and not see it as a monumental clusterfuck that is HOLDING BACK the progress and innovation we were promised with HTML5 is beyond me.
How about the REAL reason Microsoft went their own way?
Because they want to control the plan form so that if they successfully gain traction, they can start locking everyone else out. Just like they do with everything else.
The issue MS has with WebRTC is that they cannot easily and reliably port the Skype protocol over to WebRTC because WebRTC is relatively high level. They propose lower level API that would allow more kinds of protocols to be implemented. They argue that higher level API would come through libraries. The WebRTC proponents argue that the core use case of WebRTC is browser to browser communication and as such the API should be higher level and if you want to do browser to Skype for example you are screwed. Frankly I think they are full of shit.
Or 4, they think they can get away with screwing everyone else and taking control of a potentially very lucrative market, like they did with:
* Internet Explorer and their custom implementations of HTML/CSS
* Their custom windows-only version of Java
* OpenXML and their subverting an entire standards body to get it ratified as a 'Standard' just so they could go after special government contracts requiring an open format, without having to give up control of the office suite space.
* Custom extensions to LDAP to hinder interoperability with Active Directory.
* Countless other things that anyone could find doing a few searches of Microsoft's history.
There's a reason Microsoft's catch phrase is "Embrace. Extend. Extinguish." and it's sad that, like an abused spouse, people keep giving Microsoft another chance because, "They will do better this time."
According to some articles I've read it is very hard to port the Skype protocol (or other protocols) to WebRTC because WebRTC is relatively high level. MS's proposal is for a lower level API that would allow different protocols to be implemented over it including Skype. They argue that higher level API would be provided through libraries.
The WebRTC guys. Lower level API makes more sense in this case for interop with existing apps. The WebRTC guys seem to think that everything should be in the browser anyway so other software be damned.
I guess you see what you want to see. Yes, they have a spotty past.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 5-10 times, and I deserve to have a gorilla throw chairs at me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Look up the various implementations of the standards for dealing with the offline manifest file. In this particular case, Mozilla actually caches the file (which defeats the purpose of having the offline manifest triggering updates) and Chrome and IE don't. You basically have to reconfigure your server to work around Mozilla's interpretation of the standard.
It's not only the definition of the standard, but the interpretation of the standard by each browser......and then the interpretation by the developer coding to a standard.
Bruce, Microsoft contributed the SILK codec used in Skype to the Opus project and released any related patents royalty free. I would have a hard time trusting MS if they told me the sky was blue, but they basically made the low bitrate capability of Opus legally doable.
As for those who are posting their scepticism about the opus codec's quality, the IETF standardised Opus as RFC 6716 and is making it a mandatory to implement codec for WebRTC based on it's proven performance at every applicable bitrate.
For quality comparison info:
http://opus-codec.org/comparison/
RFC 6716:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716
If both parties suppot the same codec they can use that.
And if both parties cannot support the same codec, they cannot communicate. Hence the opportunity for vendors like Microsoft to Balkanise
Microsoft has stated that "a successful standard cannot be tied to individual codecs, data formats or scenarios." Instead, CU-RTC-Web will support a number of "popular media formats and codecs as well as openness to future innovation."
They want to preserve the ability to lock their customers into a proprietary "media format and codec". Same leopard. Same spots.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."