Blackberry is fading. Android's rise has been largely at the expense of Blackberry. Their current offerings are not compelling, and their only reliable user base are those stuck in the past. Basing the success of your product on such a market segment isn't wise (which is why they are working so hard to come up with a good touch/tablet system).
Blackberry is heading the way of PalmOS and/or Amiga. A system stuck in the past, with some vocal people that will stick around a bit longer than is otherwise reasonable.
The same goes for Nokia, except they don't even really have a cogent game plan. Maybe worldwide there is some compelling reason to buy a Nokia smartphone, but in the US, anyone considering Nokia would be far better served by Android (iPhone users wouldn't really be looking into Nokia in the first place).
MS has been lapped, two+ years ago. They have a long way to get back into the race, and it doesn't seem likely. MS can't out-geek Google or out-design Apple, so it's extremely difficult to see who their target audience is supposed to be.
Everything interesting going on in the handheld market right now is going on in Android and iOS. The rest are just footnotes.
But of course, h.264 is not superior to WebM. They are generally on par, with one or the other coming out on top with very slight difference depending on the type of measurement that is done.
No. Simply comparing the capabilities of the two codecs, H.264 is objectively superior. There is absolutely no room for difference of opinion here.
In terms of image quality at the same bitrates, they are in the same league (which is a very good thing), unlike Theora vs H.264, which had Slashdotters saying the exact same thing as you are now (that they are the same, minor differences, sometimes one wins, sometimes the other, all of which was outright false, but trumpeted over and over again as fact for no other reason than ideologically based wishful thinking).
However, WebM does this while still having lots of room for improvement, plus the perfect storm of open source software: large corporate backers and many, many talented open source coders motivated by technical and philosophical reasons. I would bet WebM will beat h.264 handsomely in a couple of years in most technical tests you can throw at it.
The exact same thing was said about Theora. Room for improvement, talented coders, open source license. I guess the one thing WebM adds is the big corporate backer...
This is called "vaporware". The, "it will be better!" argument is a lame Microsoft tactic. WebM is most definitely *not* better now. Don't expect an industry to turn on a dime over promises of improvement, especially when this promise is coming from the open source crowd.
Of course, that ignores the legal/philosophical aspect of the virtues of having an unencumbered codec.
As well it should. As an end user, I only care about actual, practical, objective benefits. The license is irrelevant as long as it is reasonable, and for 99+% of the people out there, H.264's license is reasonable.
While MPEG-LA has the only interest of making as much money as possible
While I don't subscribe to this notion of corporate motivation, I have to ask why you seem to think this is true for MPEG-LA, but not for Google? MPEG-LA has an interest in making sure that H.264 is widely used. Specifically, it has a motivation to keep its members happy, and its most high profile members have a greater interest in having H.264 widely used than they have in the revenue they will receive from royalties.
that kind of control is not possible with WebM and therefor it is a lot more attractive platform for using it in environments that do not want to be dragged into the swamp of licensing, for those who want to redistribute libraries and software including those libraries and ultimately for the pockets of end users.
MPEG-LA openly licenses H.264 to anyone who wants it. WebM is cheaper, but WebM is also not widely used, and is not compatible with any consumer camera or video player, and not hardware compatible with any device right now (which is critical for handhelds, important for notebooks, and even useful for desktops). The licensing fee for H.264 gives a lot of value to everyone involved. Cutting costs by going with the cheaper WebM is just not worth it. The few cents you might save by avoiding H.264 will create greater costs to you in terms of battery life and overall performance. And most consumers can't do away with their H.264 license anyway since it comes with their OS and their hardware, and they have H.264 encoded videos.
So what you are arguing for is to add a codec, without any actual benefit for doing so, and lots of downsides. I don't see why anyone thinks this is a good idea outside of ideological delusions.
The argument that you're trying to apply is the same as Microsoft touted with SCO and patents against Linux: a stupid scare tactic that eventually became an embarrasment for the very source perpetrating it.
You, on the other hand, are an apologist for the inferior WebM codec, simply because it's ideologically compatible with you.
Hell, yeah! Is there something wrong to base my decision to endorse Google based on moral reasoning?
Yes, there is, if you expect the rest of the world to follow you and choose inferior products based on something they don't give half a shit about, specifically Open Source or avoiding patents.
I stopped buying Nike shoes back in 90ies on moral reasoning. If I’d ever buy a diamond, I would make sure it isn’t a bloody one. Why would it be any difference with my video codec?
Because you've gone off the deep end if you are comparing sweat shops and blood diamond mines, with paying a company for a superior product.
I do my work with Corel Draw and make a fair amount of money with it. If Corel would try to pick a percentage of my profit, I’d ditch Draw. With is different, winner of this dispute gets a legal monopoly on web video for the rest of it’s life and I don’t want MPEG-LA racketeering video production business in that time, no matter how small fee are. Especially, when there is a choice with comparable performance.
Then you understand the value in paying for the tools you use. WebM is *not* comparable with H.264. It is technologically inferior, but at least in the same class, so that's a better situation than it was with the last geek darling Theora (which belies your assertion that "comparable performance" is all that important). But H.264 is widely used and widely supported. Until WebM is hardware accelerated in the vast majority of handhelds, and is natively supported in Windows and Mac OS X, and is common on the web, it makes sense to talk about adding it to the HTML5 <video> tag, or even going further and completely replacing H.264 with it.
I never said otherwise. But "could be dangerous" is a shitty way to live life.
So I’d have to make my decision based on lifestyles you approve of?
No, you can make any choice you want. You're the one expecting everyone else to follow along with your ideologically based decisions. Everyone already uses a perfectly fantastic codec. You're the one asking the world to switch. You're projecting.
It's *not* dangerous, and MPEG-LA has made statements to allay any fears of it becoming dangerous in the future, and WebM can be just as dangerous as H.264, and you and your fellow apologists (notice the context which makes this term proper) gloss over this. MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest, as opposed to an imaginary danger..
You compare a news statement of a paid spokesperson of MPEG-LA that there will be no further changes of licence terms against Google’s irrevocable release?
If you read what I wrote, you'll realize I did no such thing.
You compare a lifetime of paying MPEG-LA against potential damages based on claims that are not proven in court? You may wanna google up term “risk management”. Or Bing it up, or whatever.....
Patents expire, and MPEG-LA is not asking much. If they were, there would be real and proper pressure to replace H.264. But they aren't. They've been around for a long time and don't have a history of being onerous. Their existence relies on promoting technology, not choking the life out of it.
You've summed the situation up quite well. I don't post here expecting to win an argument, just to provide a rational point of view based on how the world actually is. Somebody has to.
>MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest,
In other words if they lose in the marketplace against WebM they will try to win the courtroom with their stable of bullshit patents like "drawing to screen web-based device" and "putting data in framebuffer of mobile device"
H.264 is technologically superior to WebM. You're the one already using patents against them. If it weren't for patents, you'd support it.
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats.
I'm not. I'm stating that they exist and that their existence can and does have legal implications.
They're roadblocks society has long overgrown. Suggesting that we should align ourselves with the larger mafiosio because he has more guns is stupid, shortsighted, and shows you to be a MPEGLA shill even if that isn't your intention.
Stop building up strawmen. I'm not suggesting we should align with MPEG-LA at all. I'm saying we should use H.264, because it is high quality, already widely supported, and reasonably licensed. You're the one being irrational. You're choosing an inferior, unused format simply based on ideology, calling anyone who disagrees with you, anyone who looks at reality and makes an actual rational choice, a "stupid, short-shighted shill".
Microsoft recognised this early which is why they made sure IE9 would make use of WebM if it was installed. Perhaps they'll even start distributing it with IE in the future.
This is not an example of them "recognizing this [WebM heading towards universality]".
It seems to me that as WebM support grows with more and more videos available in WebM and with new browser releases like Firefox 4, your objection to it just becomes less and less relevant. Don't be scared. Embrace WebM and be happy.
I'm talking about reality right now. If WebM actually supplants H.264, of course I'll use it. But just because Google made it free, and is making a plugin for it, does not make this a foregone conclusion.
H.264 is firmly entrenched. I really don't give a shit if that spot were held by H.264 or WebM or any other open codec. But I see no reason or benefit to replacing it as a consumer.
If you have any ads on your page, even if you are using using just ad words and you show that video it might be argued you are using it commercially.
No. The license only demands fees if you actually charge for individual works (such as how iTunes sells TV shows). Ads are perfectly fine.
You just being an apologist because you bought a bunch of h.264 toys.
No. I support it because it's superior. And it's not being an apologist if the thing you are supporting is superior in the manner in which you are supporting it.
You, on the other hand, are an apologist for the inferior WebM codec, simply because it's ideologically compatible with you. There is absolutely no way whatsoever in which WebM is superior to H.264 except in terms of licensing. You probably supported Theora with the same fervor and for the same reasons.
You know we are right that h.264 could be dangerous.
I never said otherwise. But "could be dangerous" is a shitty way to live life. It's *not* dangerous, and MPEG-LA has made statements to allay any fears of it becoming dangerous in the future, and the members of MPEG-LA have a strongly vested interest in H.264 not becoming dangerous.
WebM can be just as dangerous as H.264, and you and your fellow apologists (notice the context which makes this term proper) gloss over this. MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest, as opposed to an imaginary danger which makes no sense other than to provide a paranoia-induced boogie man for which to scare people into supporting inferior codecs, since telling them that "it's Open Source!" is insufficient to do so.
Try buying a video camera that doesn't use either x264 or mpeg2 video codecs. Every major video camera maker, and just about every minor one uses these codecs.
That's the whole point of creating a standard high quality codec. Would you rather Sony, Olympus, etc., all have their own incompatible formats? What's worse, is these formats would be limited in quality by lack of licensing of patents.
By pooling their patents, a codec which is legal, high quality, and universally supported is possible.
So when you buy them, you have to pay the royalty fees. That would be what I would consider maximizing profits.
How is the free choices of other, non-MPEG-LA members an example of MPEG-LA maximizing their profits?
Sony pays more to license H.264 than they receive in royalties from their licensing fees, by definition. So how is this Sony maximizing their profits? Wouldn't it be better to use their own, proprietary codec?
It would be more profitable, but it would not be better. They tried that with ATRAC and UMD and it didn't work. What *does* work is having an open format which is high quality and universally supported.
There are other codecs that would work just as great and are flexible and free to use (like Googles own WebM as an example) but the owners of the other codecs don't have the muscle of MPEG-LA, so they get strangled out so the MPEG-LA, and only MPEG-LA, is profiting from digital video codec sales.
Google can join MPEG-LA. And to assert that WebM would work "just as great" is absolute bullshit at this point in time. A standard that is widely supported is far superior to even a better format that is poorly supported. Doubly so when it comes to battery life of handheld devices. But WebM isn't even technologically better in any way. H.264 is superior. The *only* thing WebM has on H.264 is its licensing arrangement (and even that's dubious given the likelihood of it infringing upon MPEG-LA's patents).
It also gives the MPEG-LA power over how people use the videos they make. According to the licensing of x264, you will also need an additional license to use your digital video commercially, and since any video made with a digital video recording (becoming quite the norm with most people) that means that MPEG-LA yet again has their fingers in the pie for more money.
Big deal. If you are using your video commercially, you can pay for it. It's not expensive. Do you bitch about Photoshop because it costs money to use? It's a tool used in making your product. You pay for your tools, or you use other tools. H.264 is not an expensive tool.
It doesn't matter if you later transfer the video to a different codec that is free since at one point of the making of the video it was done in MPEG-LA's codec so they are entitled to their fee's. (While the MPEG-LA has stated that you don't need an extra license to shoot commercial video with h.264 cameras, that doesn't hold any weight since it says you do in the license agreement and in the eyes of the law, the license agreement is what the reality is).
FUD. Unless you can cite some lawsuits to this effect. Slashdot's shrill cry of "but they MIGHT!" is pure FUD. If you truly believe that MPEG-LA is trying to get H.264 into cameras as a trojan horse, then they will spring their trap and demand royalties left and right you are paranoid. Yes, it *can* happen, but it won't. Do you think Apple and Sony and MS are going to condone something like this?
Geeks like to bring up Unisys. That's an example of a pure inadvertent patent troll. They discovered their IP was being used, and they began suing over it. The effects of those lawsuits where extremely minimal, BTW. But one huge difference is that MPEG-LA knows how it's being used, and they have both stated publicly, and have a vested interest internally, of not doing this.
But for the main suspects (Apple, MS, etc.), they are members of MPEG-LA *not* for the patent royalties, but for a codec which could otherwise not exist. Apple, especially, needs a high quality, industry standard codec. Almost every product they make benefits greatly from this. They make far more from the existence of the codec than they do from the royalties of their patents.
Certainly, the MPEG-LA exists to make a profit themselves, and there are also certainly members whose sole contribution are patents for which they simply want royalties, but specifically with regards to H.264 as it relates to computers and the Internet, the benefit of having H.264 exist is far greater than the royalties it generates. That's what I mean by not being primarily for profits.
I never said they don't desire profits, so bolding a part where they say they seek profits doesn't prove or disprove anything. What you have to show is that the profits are the primary motive for H.264's existence.
you are falling into the old trap of failing to consider the indirect and long term costs.
What "indirect and long term costs" are you talking about?
as well, the market only cares about what is "good enough" at the price they want to pay ($0), not which codec scores 0.17% higher on some subjective quantification.
The market has already chosen H.264. The price is "good enough". WebM's price is a little bit less, but not enough to get people to switch over to it en masse.
H.264 is here to stay. The only thing that's uncertain is whether WebM will establish itself as a consumer standard, or join Theora in irrelevancy.
we've seen over and over that "internet-time" goes by very fast, so the market inertia is only worth 6 months-3 years at best.
"Internet time" is more about new things than throwing out the old. Jpeg is a good example of this. Supposedly better standards have come out, including PNG and JPEG-2000. But good old jpeg is here to stay. Even if every digital camera moved over to a new format, computers would have to support jpeg pretty much forever, because people aren't going to convert all their digital photos.
"can't win: don't even try" attitudes never changed the world and didn't get these startups to where they are today.
WebM won't change the world. It's neither revolutionary nor evolutionary. The only thing going for it for people and organizations not named "Google" is it's a little bit cheaper. If your name is "Google", you also get the benefit of owning the rights to the codec.
what I don't get why the fuck do people keep modding up your bullshit opinions in these threads? I mean you're entitled to them of course; nothing personal but there's nothing highly insightful or new in them (nor mine), just the usual back-and-forth slashfroth. and yet they keep on popping up.
The get modded up because people think they deserve it. They also get modded down because other people think they deserve that.
My opinion is that WebM is too late, and is not compelling enough to be worth all the annoyance it (and Google's decision to drop H.264 from Chrome) will bring. The rest of what I write is just the facts. My opinion is based on the real-world, consumer-centric interpretation of the facts. The majority opinion here on Slashdot is based on the idealistic geek-centric point of view, with a large heap of Free Software ideology thrown in for good measure.
Time and again the consumer point of view has triumphed the geek-centric view. There's no reason to expect this to change, ever.
The devices you buy have the (small) price built in. But when you say "costs me nothing to use on the web" does that mean stuff you upload to YouTube or FaceBook? 'cause it isn't free for those guys to redistribute it.
Yes, it is. They only have to pay a license if they charge for individual videos (e.g. TV shows).
Even if they did have to pay for it, I don't see how that affects me as a consumer, since I don't have to pay to upload to YouTube or Facebook.
if what you're saying is true, why didn't they just make it open, maybe with a foundation in charge of certifying different implementations ?
Why? What they're doing now is working just fine.
what do you mean by "pissing in their pool" ? do you mean competing ? is that a bed thing now ? or illegal ?
Illegal? WTF?
What I mean is that there is an already established, fairly licensed codec that is pretty much universally supported. By coming out with a new codec, Google is muddying the waters. Not a big deal on its own, but by removing H.264 from Chrome, they are taking a system that works just fine, and deliberately throwing a wrench into the works.
If they win, what benefit will I see as a consumer? I will end up with an inferior codec (WebM), and a bunch of hardware which can't play it efficiently, and a bunch of existing H.264 content. This means I will still have to have a license for H.264, so I don't even gain not needing that! And retail prices won't end up dropping by the $1 or whatever even if I could do without H.264.
my take is the patent holder are out to make money. they can't really make it off of the consumer, client side, so they're reluctantly making it free as in beer, in order to safeguard their business-side revenue. and they may change their mind at any later date about the special terms under which x.264 is for now allowed to be used to for free in certain specific cases.
FUD.
you're wrong to think that h.264 comes for free. your devices' manufacturers have had to pay royalties, which are reflected in the price you paid for the devices.
Not really. Prices end up on boundaries like $399. H.264 does not affect the price, it affects the profits.
But what I mean is that they don't pay it specifically. It's not a component, like a larger hard drive that the consumer adds on to their purchase. And consumers don't have to buy it from MPEG-LA. It comes with the product. You're right that the money to pay for it ultimately comes from the consumer, but so does everything. It's an academic point. We pay for AutoCAD used to design the product, we pay for the robots that mill the metal, we pay for the ships that carry the parts back and forth across the ocean, etc.
MPEG-LA, and their members, primarily want a codec that can be more or less used universally.
That's easy to achieve.
No, it's not easy to achieve. In spite of that difficulty, H.264 actually has achieved this.
Release it under open, royalty-free terms for all uses (distributing, commercial and non-commercial streaming, encoding, decoding, etc) and you'll get universal use.
Worked for Theora!
That's what Google is doing. That's why WebM is already headed towards universal availability across all browsers.
It's not as simple as you think it is. Google is going to have a hard time convincing everyone to switch over the WebM.
No matter what your opinion of it, H.264 is here to stay. Forever. H.264 will never, ever disappear. Nothing Google or anyone else can do will change this. It's an established format, like jpeg. Too much content exists for it to ever vanish.
Now, it can be supplanted. If Google wants WebM to supplant H.264, they have a really tough row to hoe. Simply releasing a codec as open source, and writing plugins is not sufficient.
Microsoft recognised this early which is why they made sure IE9 would make use of WebM if it was installed. Perhaps they'll even start distributing it with IE in the future.
They did no such thing, and will do no such thing.
How is it that it costs you nothing? Are you pirating it?
I never said it costs me nothing. I said it comes with everything I own for which a codec license makes sense. I also said I don't have to pay to view it on the web. Both are true statements.
If you are using H.264 legally, you ARE paying for its licensing, even if indirectly, as part of the costs of the products you pay for that include it.
No shit, sherlock. But I also have to pay, indirectly, for licensing of Photoshop and Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro and Windows and QuickBooks and loads of other software involved in the creation of video I consume on the web. So what? If H.264's licensing was onerous, that would be one thing, but it's not.
People like me that want to run computers more safely with 100% locally compiled source code are being locked out by the MPEG-LA. If they would allow me to use MPEG-LA legally based on freely downloaded source I compile, I would use it. Being as they do not allow that, I won't use it.
That's a problem you've chosen to take upon yourself, and very, very few people have joined you. Expecting--no, demanding--that the rest of us cater to your ideological choices is extremely arrogant.
There is an alternative. If certain hardware makers (CPU or GPU or other) would make H.264 encoders/decoders in hardware, with an open interface to allow any software to use that hardware, that would work for me (then I'd be paying for H.264 licensing via my hardware purchase).
Until then, WebM, Dirac, OGG/Theora/Vorbis, FLAC, and such for my video and audio needs. If they (MPEG-LA) don't want me (someone who compiles their own source code) as a user, then I guess I won't be.
And that's quite fine, but you need to be aware that this is result of your choices.
Absolute nonsense. If you create and give away content online, you don't have to pay a license. If you create and sell content online, you do. The fees are small enough that they are not a realistic barrier.
Also, you are 100% false in claiming that they choice is to "pay or stop distributing the video". They can re-encode in WebM, Theora, or some other codec, if such a choice were actually the case.
Care to dig up some references other than "people have already testified here"? Relying on your memory of what you read on a forum filled with anti-H.264/pro-Open Source posters like here requires a fair bit of skepticism on such a claim.
> MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit...
Horseshit. It's purpose is to maximize the profits of the members.
Do you care to provide any actual content to your statement, or do you think the word "horseshit" is enough to make your point?
The primary reason companies pool their patents together like this is to enable them to license products that otherwise would not be legal due to conflicting patents, and to prevent a glut of incompatible formats.
If you think Apple has joined the MPEG-LA in order to make money directly off of the patents, you're delusional. What they want is a codec that they can use across all their products, a codec that is able to be technologically superior due to not having to leave out features for lack of legal rights, a codec that other companies support so they can spec out chips that already support it and so that web sites will use it as the preferred format.
It's a rather pragmatic, and practical, solution to the problem that software patents create.
MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit, it's a collaboration of many patent holders who have pooled their patents to create a legal, high quality, open, widely supported video codec that they can all use, preventing a slew of inferior, proprietary incompatible video formats from each company. MPEG-LA, and their members, primarily want a codec that can be more or less used universally. It's not in their best interest to become "patent trolls" and sue people not making money off of their patents.
On the other hand, it's very much in their interest to sue large companies that are deliberately pissing in their pool, like Google.
As a consumer, H.264 is pretty much perfect. It essentially comes free with everything I own, costs me nothing to use on the web, is universally supported, and runs smoothly and sips power on all my devices. Of those, WebM only does the "costs me nothing to use on the web".
On paper, WebM is inferior technology. In theory, WebM's license is superior. But in actual, present reality, H.264 is really the best thing out there, and WebM is just not compelling enough to overturn the consumer apple cart in order to cater to the ideological whims of a small minority of consumers.
'Whoosh' refers to an obvious joke/sarcasm one is missing. If that's what he's referring to, it's not terribly clever or funny, but I don't buy it. A 10 year old reference to an obscure story that doesn't even mention the actual device in question?
Android is not going to force Apple to support Flash in iOS. Android has surpassed iOS in the US for one quarter and only when counting phones. It's not like people are leaving iOS for Android in droves.
There's a very low barrier to individual users to choose between them for either
Not as low as you might think. Network effects can skew results for people that intend to share or collaborate with their documents. Just like the justification for a lot of people who choose MS Windows or MS Office, what their friends and/or business associates uses plays a big role here.
Slashdot Mirror
Blackberry is fading. Android's rise has been largely at the expense of Blackberry. Their current offerings are not compelling, and their only reliable user base are those stuck in the past. Basing the success of your product on such a market segment isn't wise (which is why they are working so hard to come up with a good touch/tablet system).
Blackberry is heading the way of PalmOS and/or Amiga. A system stuck in the past, with some vocal people that will stick around a bit longer than is otherwise reasonable.
The same goes for Nokia, except they don't even really have a cogent game plan. Maybe worldwide there is some compelling reason to buy a Nokia smartphone, but in the US, anyone considering Nokia would be far better served by Android (iPhone users wouldn't really be looking into Nokia in the first place).
MS has been lapped, two+ years ago. They have a long way to get back into the race, and it doesn't seem likely. MS can't out-geek Google or out-design Apple, so it's extremely difficult to see who their target audience is supposed to be.
Everything interesting going on in the handheld market right now is going on in Android and iOS. The rest are just footnotes.
But of course, h.264 is not superior to WebM. They are generally on par, with one or the other coming out on top with very slight difference depending on the type of measurement that is done.
No. Simply comparing the capabilities of the two codecs, H.264 is objectively superior. There is absolutely no room for difference of opinion here.
In terms of image quality at the same bitrates, they are in the same league (which is a very good thing), unlike Theora vs H.264, which had Slashdotters saying the exact same thing as you are now (that they are the same, minor differences, sometimes one wins, sometimes the other, all of which was outright false, but trumpeted over and over again as fact for no other reason than ideologically based wishful thinking).
However, WebM does this while still having lots of room for improvement, plus the perfect storm of open source software: large corporate backers and many, many talented open source coders motivated by technical and philosophical reasons. I would bet WebM will beat h.264 handsomely in a couple of years in most technical tests you can throw at it.
The exact same thing was said about Theora. Room for improvement, talented coders, open source license. I guess the one thing WebM adds is the big corporate backer...
This is called "vaporware". The, "it will be better!" argument is a lame Microsoft tactic. WebM is most definitely *not* better now. Don't expect an industry to turn on a dime over promises of improvement, especially when this promise is coming from the open source crowd.
Of course, that ignores the legal/philosophical aspect of the virtues of having an unencumbered codec.
As well it should. As an end user, I only care about actual, practical, objective benefits. The license is irrelevant as long as it is reasonable, and for 99+% of the people out there, H.264's license is reasonable.
While MPEG-LA has the only interest of making as much money as possible
While I don't subscribe to this notion of corporate motivation, I have to ask why you seem to think this is true for MPEG-LA, but not for Google? MPEG-LA has an interest in making sure that H.264 is widely used. Specifically, it has a motivation to keep its members happy, and its most high profile members have a greater interest in having H.264 widely used than they have in the revenue they will receive from royalties.
that kind of control is not possible with WebM and therefor it is a lot more attractive platform for using it in environments that do not want to be dragged into the swamp of licensing, for those who want to redistribute libraries and software including those libraries and ultimately for the pockets of end users.
MPEG-LA openly licenses H.264 to anyone who wants it. WebM is cheaper, but WebM is also not widely used, and is not compatible with any consumer camera or video player, and not hardware compatible with any device right now (which is critical for handhelds, important for notebooks, and even useful for desktops). The licensing fee for H.264 gives a lot of value to everyone involved. Cutting costs by going with the cheaper WebM is just not worth it. The few cents you might save by avoiding H.264 will create greater costs to you in terms of battery life and overall performance. And most consumers can't do away with their H.264 license anyway since it comes with their OS and their hardware, and they have H.264 encoded videos.
So what you are arguing for is to add a codec, without any actual benefit for doing so, and lots of downsides. I don't see why anyone thinks this is a good idea outside of ideological delusions.
The argument that you're trying to apply is the same as Microsoft touted with SCO and patents against Linux: a stupid scare tactic that eventually became an embarrasment for the very source perpetrating it.
An even more stu
You, on the other hand, are an apologist for the inferior WebM codec, simply because it's ideologically compatible with you.
Hell, yeah! Is there something wrong to base my decision to endorse Google based on moral reasoning?
Yes, there is, if you expect the rest of the world to follow you and choose inferior products based on something they don't give half a shit about, specifically Open Source or avoiding patents.
I stopped buying Nike shoes back in 90ies on moral reasoning. If I’d ever buy a diamond, I would make sure it isn’t a bloody one. Why would it be any difference with my video codec?
Because you've gone off the deep end if you are comparing sweat shops and blood diamond mines, with paying a company for a superior product.
I do my work with Corel Draw and make a fair amount of money with it. If Corel would try to pick a percentage of my profit, I’d ditch Draw. With is different, winner of this dispute gets a legal monopoly on web video for the rest of it’s life and I don’t want MPEG-LA racketeering video production business in that time, no matter how small fee are. Especially, when there is a choice with comparable performance.
Then you understand the value in paying for the tools you use. WebM is *not* comparable with H.264. It is technologically inferior, but at least in the same class, so that's a better situation than it was with the last geek darling Theora (which belies your assertion that "comparable performance" is all that important). But H.264 is widely used and widely supported. Until WebM is hardware accelerated in the vast majority of handhelds, and is natively supported in Windows and Mac OS X, and is common on the web, it makes sense to talk about adding it to the HTML5 <video> tag, or even going further and completely replacing H.264 with it.
I never said otherwise. But "could be dangerous" is a shitty way to live life.
So I’d have to make my decision based on lifestyles you approve of?
No, you can make any choice you want. You're the one expecting everyone else to follow along with your ideologically based decisions. Everyone already uses a perfectly fantastic codec. You're the one asking the world to switch. You're projecting.
It's *not* dangerous, and MPEG-LA has made statements to allay any fears of it becoming dangerous in the future, and WebM can be just as dangerous as H.264, and you and your fellow apologists (notice the context which makes this term proper) gloss over this. MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest, as opposed to an imaginary danger ..
You compare a news statement of a paid spokesperson of MPEG-LA that there will be no further changes of licence terms against Google’s irrevocable release?
If you read what I wrote, you'll realize I did no such thing.
You compare a lifetime of paying MPEG-LA against potential damages based on claims that are not proven in court? You may wanna google up term “risk management”. Or Bing it up, or whatever .....
Patents expire, and MPEG-LA is not asking much. If they were, there would be real and proper pressure to replace H.264. But they aren't. They've been around for a long time and don't have a history of being onerous. Their existence relies on promoting technology, not choking the life out of it.
You've summed the situation up quite well. I don't post here expecting to win an argument, just to provide a rational point of view based on how the world actually is. Somebody has to.
>MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest,
In other words if they lose in the marketplace against WebM they will try to win the courtroom with their stable of bullshit patents like "drawing to screen web-based device" and "putting data in framebuffer of mobile device"
H.264 is technologically superior to WebM. You're the one already using patents against them. If it weren't for patents, you'd support it.
Stop defending software patents as being legitimate concepts in a debate over formats.
I'm not. I'm stating that they exist and that their existence can and does have legal implications.
They're roadblocks society has long overgrown. Suggesting that we should align ourselves with the larger mafiosio because he has more guns is stupid, shortsighted, and shows you to be a MPEGLA shill even if that isn't your intention.
Stop building up strawmen. I'm not suggesting we should align with MPEG-LA at all. I'm saying we should use H.264, because it is high quality, already widely supported, and reasonably licensed. You're the one being irrational. You're choosing an inferior, unused format simply based on ideology, calling anyone who disagrees with you, anyone who looks at reality and makes an actual rational choice, a "stupid, short-shighted shill".
I never said otherwise. I responded to the claim that MS sees WebM as becoming a universally supported codec.
On people's hard drives from their digital cameras.
Microsoft recognised this early which is why they made sure IE9 would make use of WebM if it was installed. Perhaps they'll even start distributing it with IE in the future.
This is not an example of them "recognizing this [WebM heading towards universality]".
It seems to me that as WebM support grows with more and more videos available in WebM and with new browser releases like Firefox 4, your objection to it just becomes less and less relevant. Don't be scared. Embrace WebM and be happy.
I'm talking about reality right now. If WebM actually supplants H.264, of course I'll use it. But just because Google made it free, and is making a plugin for it, does not make this a foregone conclusion.
H.264 is firmly entrenched. I really don't give a shit if that spot were held by H.264 or WebM or any other open codec. But I see no reason or benefit to replacing it as a consumer.
If you have any ads on your page, even if you are using using just ad words and you show that video it might be argued you are using it commercially.
No. The license only demands fees if you actually charge for individual works (such as how iTunes sells TV shows). Ads are perfectly fine.
You just being an apologist because you bought a bunch of h.264 toys.
No. I support it because it's superior. And it's not being an apologist if the thing you are supporting is superior in the manner in which you are supporting it.
You, on the other hand, are an apologist for the inferior WebM codec, simply because it's ideologically compatible with you. There is absolutely no way whatsoever in which WebM is superior to H.264 except in terms of licensing. You probably supported Theora with the same fervor and for the same reasons.
You know we are right that h.264 could be dangerous.
I never said otherwise. But "could be dangerous" is a shitty way to live life. It's *not* dangerous, and MPEG-LA has made statements to allay any fears of it becoming dangerous in the future, and the members of MPEG-LA have a strongly vested interest in H.264 not becoming dangerous.
WebM can be just as dangerous as H.264, and you and your fellow apologists (notice the context which makes this term proper) gloss over this. MPEG-LA has already claimed that WebM most likely infringes upon their patents. If you adopt it, you risk a danger that is actually likely and in MPEG-LA's interest, as opposed to an imaginary danger which makes no sense other than to provide a paranoia-induced boogie man for which to scare people into supporting inferior codecs, since telling them that "it's Open Source!" is insufficient to do so.
Try buying a video camera that doesn't use either x264 or mpeg2 video codecs. Every major video camera maker, and just about every minor one uses these codecs.
That's the whole point of creating a standard high quality codec. Would you rather Sony, Olympus, etc., all have their own incompatible formats? What's worse, is these formats would be limited in quality by lack of licensing of patents.
By pooling their patents, a codec which is legal, high quality, and universally supported is possible.
So when you buy them, you have to pay the royalty fees. That would be what I would consider maximizing profits.
How is the free choices of other, non-MPEG-LA members an example of MPEG-LA maximizing their profits?
Sony pays more to license H.264 than they receive in royalties from their licensing fees, by definition. So how is this Sony maximizing their profits? Wouldn't it be better to use their own, proprietary codec?
It would be more profitable, but it would not be better. They tried that with ATRAC and UMD and it didn't work. What *does* work is having an open format which is high quality and universally supported.
There are other codecs that would work just as great and are flexible and free to use (like Googles own WebM as an example) but the owners of the other codecs don't have the muscle of MPEG-LA, so they get strangled out so the MPEG-LA, and only MPEG-LA, is profiting from digital video codec sales.
Google can join MPEG-LA. And to assert that WebM would work "just as great" is absolute bullshit at this point in time. A standard that is widely supported is far superior to even a better format that is poorly supported. Doubly so when it comes to battery life of handheld devices. But WebM isn't even technologically better in any way. H.264 is superior. The *only* thing WebM has on H.264 is its licensing arrangement (and even that's dubious given the likelihood of it infringing upon MPEG-LA's patents).
It also gives the MPEG-LA power over how people use the videos they make. According to the licensing of x264, you will also need an additional license to use your digital video commercially, and since any video made with a digital video recording (becoming quite the norm with most people) that means that MPEG-LA yet again has their fingers in the pie for more money.
Big deal. If you are using your video commercially, you can pay for it. It's not expensive. Do you bitch about Photoshop because it costs money to use? It's a tool used in making your product. You pay for your tools, or you use other tools. H.264 is not an expensive tool.
It doesn't matter if you later transfer the video to a different codec that is free since at one point of the making of the video it was done in MPEG-LA's codec so they are entitled to their fee's. (While the MPEG-LA has stated that you don't need an extra license to shoot commercial video with h.264 cameras, that doesn't hold any weight since it says you do in the license agreement and in the eyes of the law, the license agreement is what the reality is).
FUD. Unless you can cite some lawsuits to this effect. Slashdot's shrill cry of "but they MIGHT!" is pure FUD. If you truly believe that MPEG-LA is trying to get H.264 into cameras as a trojan horse, then they will spring their trap and demand royalties left and right you are paranoid. Yes, it *can* happen, but it won't. Do you think Apple and Sony and MS are going to condone something like this?
Geeks like to bring up Unisys. That's an example of a pure inadvertent patent troll. They discovered their IP was being used, and they began suing over it. The effects of those lawsuits where extremely minimal, BTW. But one huge difference is that MPEG-LA knows how it's being used, and they have both stated publicly, and have a vested interest internally, of not doing this.
But for the main suspects (Apple, MS, etc.), they are members of MPEG-LA *not* for the patent royalties, but for a codec which could otherwise not exist. Apple, especially, needs a high quality, industry standard codec. Almost every product they make benefits greatly from this. They make far more from the existence of the codec than they do from the royalties of their patents.
Certainly, the MPEG-LA exists to make a profit themselves, and there are also certainly members whose sole contribution are patents for which they simply want royalties, but specifically with regards to H.264 as it relates to computers and the Internet, the benefit of having H.264 exist is far greater than the royalties it generates. That's what I mean by not being primarily for profits.
I never said they don't desire profits, so bolding a part where they say they seek profits doesn't prove or disprove anything. What you have to show is that the profits are the primary motive for H.264's existence.
you are falling into the old trap of failing to consider the indirect and long term costs.
What "indirect and long term costs" are you talking about?
as well, the market only cares about what is "good enough" at the price they want to pay ($0), not which codec scores 0.17% higher on some subjective quantification.
The market has already chosen H.264. The price is "good enough". WebM's price is a little bit less, but not enough to get people to switch over to it en masse.
H.264 is here to stay. The only thing that's uncertain is whether WebM will establish itself as a consumer standard, or join Theora in irrelevancy.
we've seen over and over that "internet-time" goes by very fast, so the market inertia is only worth 6 months-3 years at best.
"Internet time" is more about new things than throwing out the old. Jpeg is a good example of this. Supposedly better standards have come out, including PNG and JPEG-2000. But good old jpeg is here to stay. Even if every digital camera moved over to a new format, computers would have to support jpeg pretty much forever, because people aren't going to convert all their digital photos.
"can't win: don't even try" attitudes never changed the world and didn't get these startups to where they are today.
WebM won't change the world. It's neither revolutionary nor evolutionary. The only thing going for it for people and organizations not named "Google" is it's a little bit cheaper. If your name is "Google", you also get the benefit of owning the rights to the codec.
what I don't get why the fuck do people keep modding up your bullshit opinions in these threads? I mean you're entitled to them of course; nothing personal but there's nothing highly insightful or new in them (nor mine), just the usual back-and-forth slashfroth. and yet they keep on popping up.
The get modded up because people think they deserve it. They also get modded down because other people think they deserve that.
My opinion is that WebM is too late, and is not compelling enough to be worth all the annoyance it (and Google's decision to drop H.264 from Chrome) will bring. The rest of what I write is just the facts. My opinion is based on the real-world, consumer-centric interpretation of the facts. The majority opinion here on Slashdot is based on the idealistic geek-centric point of view, with a large heap of Free Software ideology thrown in for good measure.
Time and again the consumer point of view has triumphed the geek-centric view. There's no reason to expect this to change, ever.
The devices you buy have the (small) price built in. But when you say "costs me nothing to use on the web" does that mean stuff you upload to YouTube or FaceBook? 'cause it isn't free for those guys to redistribute it.
Yes, it is. They only have to pay a license if they charge for individual videos (e.g. TV shows).
Even if they did have to pay for it, I don't see how that affects me as a consumer, since I don't have to pay to upload to YouTube or Facebook.
if what you're saying is true, why didn't they just make it open, maybe with a foundation in charge of certifying different implementations ?
Why? What they're doing now is working just fine.
what do you mean by "pissing in their pool" ? do you mean competing ? is that a bed thing now ? or illegal ?
Illegal? WTF?
What I mean is that there is an already established, fairly licensed codec that is pretty much universally supported. By coming out with a new codec, Google is muddying the waters. Not a big deal on its own, but by removing H.264 from Chrome, they are taking a system that works just fine, and deliberately throwing a wrench into the works.
If they win, what benefit will I see as a consumer? I will end up with an inferior codec (WebM), and a bunch of hardware which can't play it efficiently, and a bunch of existing H.264 content. This means I will still have to have a license for H.264, so I don't even gain not needing that! And retail prices won't end up dropping by the $1 or whatever even if I could do without H.264.
my take is the patent holder are out to make money. they can't really make it off of the consumer, client side, so they're reluctantly making it free as in beer, in order to safeguard their business-side revenue. and they may change their mind at any later date about the special terms under which x.264 is for now allowed to be used to for free in certain specific cases.
FUD.
you're wrong to think that h.264 comes for free. your devices' manufacturers have had to pay royalties, which are reflected in the price you paid for the devices.
Not really. Prices end up on boundaries like $399. H.264 does not affect the price, it affects the profits.
But what I mean is that they don't pay it specifically. It's not a component, like a larger hard drive that the consumer adds on to their purchase. And consumers don't have to buy it from MPEG-LA. It comes with the product. You're right that the money to pay for it ultimately comes from the consumer, but so does everything. It's an academic point. We pay for AutoCAD used to design the product, we pay for the robots that mill the metal, we pay for the ships that carry the parts back and forth across the ocean, etc.
MPEG-LA, and their members, primarily want a codec that can be more or less used universally.
That's easy to achieve.
No, it's not easy to achieve. In spite of that difficulty, H.264 actually has achieved this.
Release it under open, royalty-free terms for all uses (distributing, commercial and non-commercial streaming, encoding, decoding, etc) and you'll get universal use.
Worked for Theora!
That's what Google is doing. That's why WebM is already headed towards universal availability across all browsers.
It's not as simple as you think it is. Google is going to have a hard time convincing everyone to switch over the WebM.
No matter what your opinion of it, H.264 is here to stay. Forever. H.264 will never, ever disappear. Nothing Google or anyone else can do will change this. It's an established format, like jpeg. Too much content exists for it to ever vanish.
Now, it can be supplanted. If Google wants WebM to supplant H.264, they have a really tough row to hoe. Simply releasing a codec as open source, and writing plugins is not sufficient.
Microsoft recognised this early which is why they made sure IE9 would make use of WebM if it was installed. Perhaps they'll even start distributing it with IE in the future.
They did no such thing, and will do no such thing.
How is it that it costs you nothing? Are you pirating it?
I never said it costs me nothing. I said it comes with everything I own for which a codec license makes sense. I also said I don't have to pay to view it on the web. Both are true statements.
If you are using H.264 legally, you ARE paying for its licensing, even if indirectly, as part of the costs of the products you pay for that include it.
No shit, sherlock. But I also have to pay, indirectly, for licensing of Photoshop and Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro and Windows and QuickBooks and loads of other software involved in the creation of video I consume on the web. So what? If H.264's licensing was onerous, that would be one thing, but it's not.
People like me that want to run computers more safely with 100% locally compiled source code are being locked out by the MPEG-LA. If they would allow me to use MPEG-LA legally based on freely downloaded source I compile, I would use it. Being as they do not allow that, I won't use it.
That's a problem you've chosen to take upon yourself, and very, very few people have joined you. Expecting--no, demanding--that the rest of us cater to your ideological choices is extremely arrogant.
There is an alternative. If certain hardware makers (CPU or GPU or other) would make H.264 encoders/decoders in hardware, with an open interface to allow any software to use that hardware, that would work for me (then I'd be paying for H.264 licensing via my hardware purchase).
Until then, WebM, Dirac, OGG/Theora/Vorbis, FLAC, and such for my video and audio needs. If they (MPEG-LA) don't want me (someone who compiles their own source code) as a user, then I guess I won't be.
And that's quite fine, but you need to be aware that this is result of your choices.
Absolute nonsense. If you create and give away content online, you don't have to pay a license. If you create and sell content online, you do. The fees are small enough that they are not a realistic barrier.
Also, you are 100% false in claiming that they choice is to "pay or stop distributing the video". They can re-encode in WebM, Theora, or some other codec, if such a choice were actually the case.
Care to dig up some references other than "people have already testified here"? Relying on your memory of what you read on a forum filled with anti-H.264/pro-Open Source posters like here requires a fair bit of skepticism on such a claim.
> MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit...
Horseshit. It's purpose is to maximize the profits of the members.
Do you care to provide any actual content to your statement, or do you think the word "horseshit" is enough to make your point?
The primary reason companies pool their patents together like this is to enable them to license products that otherwise would not be legal due to conflicting patents, and to prevent a glut of incompatible formats.
If you think Apple has joined the MPEG-LA in order to make money directly off of the patents, you're delusional. What they want is a codec that they can use across all their products, a codec that is able to be technologically superior due to not having to leave out features for lack of legal rights, a codec that other companies support so they can spec out chips that already support it and so that web sites will use it as the preferred format.
It's a rather pragmatic, and practical, solution to the problem that software patents create.
MPEG-LA isn't meant primarily to generate a profit, it's a collaboration of many patent holders who have pooled their patents to create a legal, high quality, open, widely supported video codec that they can all use, preventing a slew of inferior, proprietary incompatible video formats from each company. MPEG-LA, and their members, primarily want a codec that can be more or less used universally. It's not in their best interest to become "patent trolls" and sue people not making money off of their patents.
On the other hand, it's very much in their interest to sue large companies that are deliberately pissing in their pool, like Google.
As a consumer, H.264 is pretty much perfect. It essentially comes free with everything I own, costs me nothing to use on the web, is universally supported, and runs smoothly and sips power on all my devices. Of those, WebM only does the "costs me nothing to use on the web".
On paper, WebM is inferior technology. In theory, WebM's license is superior. But in actual, present reality, H.264 is really the best thing out there, and WebM is just not compelling enough to overturn the consumer apple cart in order to cater to the ideological whims of a small minority of consumers.
Aren't Android apps multitouch?
I really don't see the desire to run phone apps on a full-blown computer. It just makes no sense.
'Whoosh' refers to an obvious joke/sarcasm one is missing. If that's what he's referring to, it's not terribly clever or funny, but I don't buy it. A 10 year old reference to an obscure story that doesn't even mention the actual device in question?
Android is not going to force Apple to support Flash in iOS. Android has surpassed iOS in the US for one quarter and only when counting phones. It's not like people are leaving iOS for Android in droves.
There's a very low barrier to individual users to choose between them for either
Not as low as you might think. Network effects can skew results for people that intend to share or collaborate with their documents. Just like the justification for a lot of people who choose MS Windows or MS Office, what their friends and/or business associates uses plays a big role here.
Google pays Mozilla in exchange for integration with Firefox.
I'm on a Commodore Vic 20
What's the weather like in Afghanistan these days?
I imagine it's windy where you are, with a notable wind shear about 5-6 feet off the ground...