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by91degrees ( 207121 ) writes:
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Maybe "implementation dependent" is the term we're after.
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byhattig ( 47930 ) writes:
We could call it a day and use DRM encrusted WMV!
Bet Microsoft is miffed they didn't get in earlier with HTML5 video support, as it is most content providers will use H.264 and thus force it to become the de-facto standard.
bynine-times ( 778537 ) writes:
I think Microsoft has lost the media wars, and they pretty well know it. (admittedly, just a guess) Expect their products to support H264 and AAC. The bigger fly in their ointment is probably improved web standards in general. They've been gearing up to fight Adobe (Silverlight vs. Flash) for the proprietary "rich web" market, and if HTML/CSS gets rich enough that we don't need a proprietary plugin, that might not end up being a market worth winning.
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bybetterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) writes:
Oh it will still be worth winning. Even if HTML5 provides a "rich web experience," applet based approaches like Flash are already very well established and will not go away overnight. The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
byDarkness404 ( 1287218 ) writes:
The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
...Because desktop applications have some real strengths where Flash/Silverlight have none? For example, I can't exactly work on a web application when the internet is down. On the other hand, Flash seems to be enjoying hogging CPU cycles and crashing browsers, plus ActionScript isn't much easier to use than JavaScript/HTML/CSS. About the only "strength" Flash has is that it is visually based (its easy for an artist to pick up). There is not a single advantage that Flash or Silverlight really have if HTML,
bybetterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) writes:
Applets certainly do have strength. Applets can guarantee a consistent experience for your users (and you can always point the blame at third party runtimes if they cause a problem). Applets can be signed when users want a higher level of security. Applets add support for unusual codecs or features that are not envisioned by a standards committee (features that can be implemented by a web developer instead if a browser developer).
byStrawberryFrog ( 67065 ) writes:
Flash/Silverlight ... I can't exactly work on a web application when the internet is down
Yes, you can exactly do that. Or will, soon, if it's coded like that. Silverlight out of browser apps (and, I suppose, Adobe AIR apps) can run without network. Better yet, the coder can detect that there's no network, and keep data locally for a later sync.
There is not a single advantage that Flash or Silverlight really have if HTML, JavaScript and CSS can make application-like things in the browser?
A nicer programming
bySir_Lewk ( 967686 ) writes:
Also, easier to make pixel-precise layouts across browsers and OSs.
I think portability should be pretty low on your list of reasons to use a proprietary browser plugin.
bydhasenan ( 758719 ) writes:
Ironically, this is an argument for using Silverlight -- Moonlight is at a reasonable state and rapidly improving.
byStrawberryFrog ( 67065 ) writes:
I didn't say portable. Having done it, it's *way* easier to make an app look and move exactly the same on a mac and a Windows box using Silverlight than it is using html/JavaScript.
bySir_Lewk ( 967686 ) writes:
No, you didn't say portable. What you said was "across browsers and OSs." which to any reasonable individual is read to mean "portable".
bycomplete loony ( 663508 ) writes:
And then there's google gears which attempts the same disconnected operation with straight html & javascript.
byMightyYar ( 622222 ) writes:
Flash, to my recollection, was pretty much limited to ads and mediocre games before YouTube came along. If YouTube dumped flash, would it still be deemed necessary by the average user? Certainly iPhone users seem to be getting along without it...
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bySloppy ( 14984 ) writes:
That's my thinking. If youtube dumps Flash, Flash becomes obscure overnight.
Flash, the world won't miss you.
byaccount_deleted ( 4530225 ) writes:
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byimamac ( 1083405 ) writes:
I have yet to wish for flash on my iPhone.
byRepossessed ( 1117929 ) writes:
It would need to be more than just youtube for me to uninstall flash, but streaming video is the one thing I actually care about enough to put up with it for...
byDragonWriter ( 970822 ) writes:
Flash, to my recollection, was pretty much limited to ads and mediocre games before YouTube came along. If YouTube dumped flash, would it still be deemed necessary by the average user?
Whether or not YouTube was the "killer app" that drove it to prominence, its become very popular for all kinds of things since, so, yeah, I think YouTube alone being usable without it wouldn't make it superfluous for users immediately. OTOH, the other things it is used for are also things that HTML5+CSS3+Javascript could handl
byMightyYar ( 622222 ) writes:
and IE is dominant on the desktop (ditto),
I think here is the interesting point. If a service comes along that is deemed as must-have as YouTube and it requires HTML 5, it may drive people to install a browser which supports it - much like people actually went through the trouble to install Flash just so they could use YouTube.
Of course, this mystery service is currently mythological... :)
bynine-times ( 778537 ) writes:
Oh, I don't think Flash will go away overnight. On the other hand, a lot of that will be the inertia of people sticking with Flash particularly, which is exactly the force MS has to overcome to spur Silverlight adoption. But absent that inertia, I think people may well move to open standards, assuming sufficiently good standards exist.
bya2wflc ( 705508 ) writes:
> I don't think Flash will go away overnight.
I don't think it will go away at all
Not when agencies can charge $100s for a 100K flash app that does something our html contractor could have done in 5 minutes and 2 lines of javascript he found online. (trivial apps like rotating images)
(Many) Agencies and individuals like to be "experts" on things that take special tools and knowledge so they can charge more.
LOTS of contractors can do html/css/basic javscript. Not as many can do flash and those who can do
bypsbrogna ( 611644 ) writes:
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that applet based approaches WILL go away overnight should HTML5 deliver a sufficiently rich replacement. Flash blocking browser extensions & their ilk are some of the most popular downloads out there. Granted the cost of switching is high, but if the penetration rate for rich content is suddenly an order of magnitude higher (and this might be conservatively low), then the switching cost is justified by the increased views.
byZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) writes:
Oh it will still be worth winning. Even if HTML5 provides a "rich web experience," applet based approaches like Flash are already very well established and will not go away overnight. The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
Because the number of new applications for plugins will shrink. If I'm making a website and have a choice between two plug-in that not all my customer base will have and using straight HTML5 that anyone can access, I'm skipping the plugin unless it's much more poweful. HTML5 might take a while to replace legacy Flash sites, but when people do get around to migrating them, they won't move to Silverlight if HTML5 is easier for their viewer base.
bybetterunixthanunix ( 980855 ) writes:
Your assumption is that everyone will suddenly have an HTML5 compliant browser. Just because something is standardized does not mean that it will suddenly be widely used -- I would not be surprised if it took 10 years before HTML5 worked reliably across all browsers.
byZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) writes:
I'm assuming HTML5 adoption will be swift, because unlike HTML4, the browser vendors are writing the spec. Many features in HTML5 are being supported already in the browsers. It's not like past specs, where the committee writes the spec and tries to get people to go along with it. Instead, as this debate illustrates, all the non-Microsoft browser vendors are coming to consensus on the HTML5 draft spec. Implementation will be swift(ish). The video tag itself works today in Firefox and Safari.
When HTML5
byshutdown -p now ( 807394 ) writes:
I think Microsoft has lost the media wars, and they pretty well know it. (admittedly, just a guess) Expect their products to support H264 and AAC.
It has already been announced a while ago: Silverlight 3 will support H.264 for video, and AAC for audio [on10.net].
bynine-times ( 778537 ) writes:
Oh, yeah, I meant, "Expect their products to support H264 and AAC from here on out." I think the Windows 7, Zune, and Xbox already support H264 and AAC. (Though I don't own any of them, so I may be wrong.)
bySerious Callers Only ( 1022605 ) writes:
It has already been announced a while ago: Silverlight 3 will support H.264 for video, and AAC for audio [on10.net].
Yes, they appear to have given up fighting to control codecs, though the more important question is whether IE will support the video element this decade.
byshutdown -p now ( 807394 ) writes:
I'm fairly certain it's possible to emulate <video> using JavaScript and Silverlight. It won't be perfect - much like IE6 PNG alpha hack wasn't - but so long as it gets the job done, it's good enough. And if enough people use it, it will get properly supported eventually.
byDrGamez ( 1134281 ) writes:
The whole point was to make it so you didn't need any additional plugins or support to get video to play. I know it's a work-around but faking it seems to go against the whole point.
byEXrider ( 756168 ) writes:
I think Microsoft has lost the media wars, and they pretty well know it. (admittedly, just a guess)
Ugh... bulky .WMV files are all I get in those "Subject: FW: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: WOW NEATO LOOK AT THIS!!!" emails from retired relatives. Seems MS has one niche in the market nailed; the niche that doesn't understand how to post and/or send links of videos that are posted on websites.
bygandhi_2 ( 1108023 ) writes:
But you can harvest thousands of email addresses from those FW: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: WOW NEATO LOOK AT THIS!!! emails.
byEXrider ( 756168 ) writes:
Indeed, thanks to the same niche who doesn't understand how to use the BCC field.
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
I think Microsoft has lost the media wars, and they pretty well know it. (admittedly, just a guess) Expect their products to support H264 and AAC.
Microsoft products have supported H.264 and AAC for quite a while. They're in Zune, Xbox 360, MediaRoom (IPTV), and it's coming in Silverlight 3 and Windows 7.
byjvillain ( 546827 ) writes:
On the audio side yes Microsoft has lost big time. But they almost have the video side sewn up. DRM is becoming more and more prevalent with video and pretty well all DRM leads back to Microsoft. It doesn't matter what codec they use if you can't see it any ways because it is wrapped in a Microsoft only DRM wrapper. This is a leaver they can use both to clobber other operating systems as well as other browsers. If you can't run most movie content on your mac because Microsoft hasn't deemed to provide a plug
bynine-times ( 778537 ) writes:
DRM is becoming more and more prevalent with video and pretty well all DRM leads back to Microsoft.
Can you spell that out a little more? I mean, a few years ago, I was aware of a lot of services selling DRM wrapped WMAs, but I can't think of a service that uses DRM wrapped WMVs. Mostly I hear about people using Hulu, which isn't using Microsoft's DRM. It doesn't seem to me that DRM with video isn't any more prevalent than it was a couple years ago.
bydrewness ( 85694 ) writes:
Can you spell that out a little more? I mean, a few years ago, I was aware of a lot of services selling DRM wrapped WMAs, but I can't think of a service that uses DRM wrapped WMVs. Mostly I hear about people using Hulu, which isn't using Microsoft's DRM. It doesn't seem to me that DRM with video isn't any more prevalent than it was a couple years ago.
If you want an explicit Microsoft DRM video example, Netflix uses Silverlight DRM for their PC and Mac based player. It's basically the only part of Silverlight they haven't licensed to Novell for Moonlight. So, no Netflix for Linux, even once Moonlight 2 and 3 are ready.
by93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) writes:
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Since it seems pretty likely most web users couldn't care less about open vs. closed software, the answer seems obvious - go with h.264, the superior but closed codec. And do it now before Microsoft wades in and decides to muddy things up with more embrace/extend/extinguish shenanigans.
by91degrees ( 207121 ) writes:
Browser developers do care! It's not just a political thing. Website developers and users would prefer h.264 (even if they don't know it) because it provides higher quality or lower bandwidth requirements. Several browser developers prefer Theora because their income is too small for the expense of licensing h.264.
byshmlco ( 594907 ) writes:
If the H.264 folk were smart they'd encourage browser vendors to support H.264 and license it to them for free. Why? Because that would ensure that H.264 becomes the dominate standard, and open the floodgates to users creating and uploading and playing H.264 video.
In the meantime, the H.264 group makes its money off the hardware guys, as now every computer, notebook, phone, and media device will need low-power dedicated H.264 hardware decoders.
byNicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) writes:
They're not content with having hardware makers pay, they charge for encoding, decoding and software, if they can get away with it.
byaccount_deleted ( 4530225 ) writes:
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byNicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) writes:
and a poster child against software patents. It's *very* expensive for small players, it's incompatible with free media, the terms are almost impossible to comprehend (or at least you need several "IP" lawyers on staff), plus you aren't even assured that you won't be sued in Texas by some scum sucking, syphillitic pus-drinking, rotting corpse-devouring and worm-infested defecation-eating patent troll.
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byDavid Gerard ( 12369 ) writes:
Scum Sucking Syphillitic Pus-Drinking Rotting Corpse Devouring Worm Infested Defecation Eaters' Anti-Defamation League on line two for you. They're upset at being compared to patent trolls or MPEG-LA, and are demanding you upgrade their status to "like child rapists."
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byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
Inferior standard. Judging from HTML4, by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today so alleged superiority buys us very little, there'll still be a time where people interested in performance ignore the standard altogether. On the other hand, H.264's patent concerns will be with us for the next ~20 years, so Theora's advantage in ease of implementation will likely hold up for a much longer time.
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bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
I wish I knew enough about this stuff to make a good guess. From a time perspective though I can see where you are going in that there will be replacements to H264 and possibly Ogg will still be around by then, at a later time of implementation.
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
bymaxume ( 22995 ) writes:
It matters very little. If Microsoft and Apple fail to implement Theora, the fact that the standard calls for it will not matter (because it will not be practical as a universal fallback).
Mozilla can't license H.264 in a way that lets downstream packagers use it, so they don't want to put it in the standard either.
The previous /. story discussing the email Hickson sent out covered this stuff pretty well.
It isn't particularly hard to do things like put a flash fallback inside of a video tag, so people that want to use the standard but still have wide reach have lots of options (flash is the de facto way to play 'web' video today, so I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this may continue).
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bydiscord5 ( 798235 ) writes:
It isn't particularly hard to do things like put a flash fallback inside of a video tag, so people that want to use the standard but still have wide reach have lots of options (flash is the de facto way to play 'web' video today, so I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this may continue).
Then why even bother at all and let's keep on using flash. Currently as a host you only need to host a flash app and either encode your content to flv or h.264. Most of your target audience already has flash installed, and those who want to view your content will probably install flash. Since now it's undefined in the standard, that would mean that you'd have to host an h.264 for the ogg-impaired browsers, an ogg for the h.264 impaired, and then fall back to ye olde tried and tested method of the abominable
bymaxume ( 22995 ) writes:
Hence the 'people who want to use the standard'. I don't think it will improve things much tomorrow, but 5 years from now, it will probably be easier to serve video.
bydrewness ( 85694 ) writes:
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
The biggest problem it causes is that you can't just stick one video inside a <video> tag and know it will work with all browsers. You can specify several videos of different formats and browsers will play the first one that they can (and right now you also have to put a flash based player or something in for IE, but that's a separate problem), but you still have to at least generate an h264 and a Theora video.
byZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) writes:
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
What it does is requires you to have a Ogg file to show to Firefox/Opera and a H.264 file for Safari. Chrome will support both (but downstream repackagers of Chromium are stuck with Ogg-only). Who knows what Internet Explorer will do. This isn't technically hard (as the video tag allows for multiple sources already), just annoying (as you need two copies of each video) for websites.
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today
What codecs are you thinking of? None of the research codecs have come close to matching H.264 so far. The most promising efforts are those of MPEG, working on what's likely to become H.265.
I can't think of even a dozen new delivery codecs being worked on. Theora, Snow, Dirac... What else?
The plus of the ISO process is that everyone with a great codec idea they'd like to get paid for brings it to the table, so you get that alchemy of all the best current ideas being implemented together, with lots of tuning
byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
I don't see why video will be any different once there is actually an accepted standard for it.
XviD isn't even a candidate in this, even though it has far wider support in both hardware and software than h.264. Why? "ohh, h.264 is much better". What makes you think the same won't happen with h.264 itself?
I've got no concerns over h.264 patents. The only people are those who have an agenda to push.
Wrong. Either you live outside the US, or you *should* worry about h.264 because MPEG certainly cares about you or anyone else who uses their patent without the requisite license.
Other than 'I can't just use their code without paying for it', I've yet to see any other reason not to use h264, please enlighten me, without resorting to FUD (i.e. copyright/patent bullshit).
Per-user licensing schemes are incompatible with most Free Software licenses. If you want to know more, ask a lawyer, I'm
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
XviD isn't even a candidate in this, even though it has far wider support in both hardware and software than h.264. Why? "ohh, h.264 is much better". What makes you think the same won't happen with h.264 itself?
No, I bet H.264 has more decoders out there than MPEG-4 ASP. There're certainly much more content, and more authoring tools.
ASP really only caught on in the piracy scene.
Plus MPEG-4 Part 2 is also licensed by MPEG-LA, so it doesn't address licensing issues, but it'd a lot weaker codec than H.264.
byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
No, I bet H.264 has more decoders out there than MPEG-4 ASP. There're certainly much more content, and more authoring tools.
Wrong. Pretty much all DVD players by LG, Samsung and Sony support DivX, not to mention every video-capable portable media player from the PSP to chinese-made "MP4 players", none of which support h.264. And to say it "only" caught on the piracy scene is like saying IE is "only" dominant among Windows users, the piracy scene is what made MP3 what it is today.
I know about the licensing schemes, but when comparing it to h.264 its meaningless: everyone who demands the better codec over the more widely supported
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
Wrong. Pretty much all DVD players by LG, Samsung and Sony support DivX, not to mention every video-capable portable media player from the PSP to chinese-made "MP4 players", none of which support h.264.
But none of the cable/sat set top boxes do Part 2, and there are tons of those. And they account for many, many more eye-ball hours than Part 2 on DVD players; most users have probably never watched a "divx" file off disc.
Flash and Silverlight don't have Part 2 support. QuickTime does SP, but not ASP.
I'm confident the number of H.264 players in use today is substantailly bigger than for MPEG-4 part 2.
bygbarules2999 ( 1440265 ) writes:
But browsers are FREE. Licensing isn't an issue for software that isn't given away. This stuff doesn't come free (or cheap), you know.
Remember how the MPEG "patent police" came and confiscated a whole bunch of MP3 playing devices at a convention? Sandisk still has a grudge about that; that's partially why they added OGG and FLAC capabilities to their latest players, I'd guess.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/05/0316250
●ath your current threshold.
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
Why the false dichotomy? The market had already voted long before W3C threw in the towel. Apple wasn't going to budge simply because its hardware platform was geared for h.264. It would render the hardware obsolete because now you have to run a software decoder for Theora, sapping the battery for processing that a dedicated, low power h.264 chip already does.
The problem with the 'open standard' is not necessarily its inferiority, per se, but its complete, utter lack of general market acceptance.
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byarevos ( 659374 ) writes:
The problem with the 'open standard' is not necessarily its inferiority, per se, but its complete, utter lack of general market acceptance.
Which market? The browser market is currently tipped toward Theora, because Firefox, being an open source project, is unlikely to implement H.264.
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
See, you're not looking towards the future. You need to be thinking what browsers people will be using. See, you keep thinking that everyone in the future will be sitting at home on a computer. You keep thinking that whatever browser people will be using, they'll have myriad choices on what device they will be using it on.
More and more people will be using mobile devices to do surfing, watch videos, etc. This comes back to hardware. What devices currently have a hardware decoder for Theora? How many i
byarevos ( 659374 ) writes:
See, you're not looking towards the future. You need to be thinking what browsers people will be using.
Are you suggesting that by the time HTML5 video becomes common, the primary method of browsing the web will be through low-power handheld devices?
I'm inclined to disagree. I think the HTML5 video format war will be largely decided before handheld devices overtake desktop machines.
And that is my greatest criticism for OSS (yes, I know generalities)--it only thinks of its own self-importance, too busy playing 'me too', and not taking the big picture into consideration
It's not just that Mozilla doesn't want to support H.264. They legally cannot do so and remain open source.
byBitZtream ( 692029 ) writes:
We already have that, and it fucking sucks, the point is to implement a common standard that EVERYONE supports as the lowest common denominator, not just add a new version of the object or applet tag specific to video.
Myself, I'll go with closed over inferior, the only people who won't are zealots/fanboys. Unfortunately the real problem here is that Theora might not be inferior if you throw some resources at it.
Remember, Linux didn't become awesome overnight, I've yet to see an OSS project that does. With
byPJ Kix ( 464415 ) writes:
why does there only have to be one format? ....
for a fun time s/ogg/jpeg and s/h264/gif
see how ridiculous it sounds now
byPJ Kix ( 464415 ) writes:
why not support as many formats as possible?
also for reference look at the current browsers image support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Image_format_support [wikipedia.org]
bynoundi ( 1044080 ) writes:
No the question is: by the time HTML5 is fully used, how long will it take until Theora is equal to H.264? If it becomes such a standard the project will be in the interest of many. Those of you that understand the process of developing FOSS have already concluded that Theora is the best choice and that it's only a matter of time.
byRotworm ( 649729 ) writes:
I don't understand the inferiority justification, side by side [xiph.org] they look indistinguishable to me.
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