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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byRedK ( 112790 ) writes:
Let the market decide. Too bad we've already been down that road and it wasn't pretty at all...
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
The market has already decided. But it wasn't decided because of software, it was decided on hardware. Theora does not have a dedicated hardware decoder that hardware makers can pull off the shelf and incorporate into their devices. h.264 does. And, when you take into consideration the sheer number of devices that have that chip installed (virtually every 5th generation iPod and forward from Apple) it becomes very easy to tell that h.264 was going to be the winner.
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byAnonymous Coward writes:
If HTML5 had required Theora support, there'd be two or three months delay and then all the ASICs you could shake a stick at would be there.
Apple use H.264 and so their iPod/iPhone/et al demand an ASIC for it. But until Apple wanted one, there wasn't one.
For full systems (notepad/tablet/laptop/PC) there would be a mod to the graphics card driver and there would be hardware accellerated Theora. Two weeks tops.
But there WILL NOT be a patent free H.264 for another 17+ years.
Odd you forgot about that beam in th
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
But you highlight why 'free' software is not enough. Apple wanted a chip, so it used its buying power for one to be created. It retains the right to use whatever technology it wants. But more importantly than that, where's the free community on hardware? There's your answer.
If you're wanting something to compete on the global stage, then it needs to step up and address all facets of its possible use because there is more to technology than if it's an open standard or not. If nothing else, Theora is an e
byDahamma ( 304068 ) writes:
If HTML5 had required Theora support, there'd be two or three months delay and then all the ASICs you could shake a stick at would be there.
It's not nearly that "trivial"...
These days it's not about simple decoders/ASIC chips, it's about complex SoCs that require a huge amount of development, testing, reference software/drivers, etc (not to mention manufacturing, marketing, sales/design wins, and application development/integration before it gets into a CE device...)
And those SoCs with H.264 support are alr
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
When consumers purchased 22,727,000 iPods and 4,363,000 iPhones [apple.com] in the 1st quarter of fiscal 2009 alone.
Looking at h.264 hardware marketshare, that alone is pretty damning. Next question?
byspeedtux ( 1307149 ) writes:
What difference does it make? People who watch videos on iPhones and iPods are going to buy them through iTunes. Furthermore, Apple's proprietary phones have equally proprietary web sites to go with them anyway. And until HTML5 actually gets widely adopted, all those Apple products are going to be obsolete anyway; Apple has plenty of time to build Ogg hardware into their devices if they really care.
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byGoaway ( 82658 ) writes:
Pretty much every new video-playing device these days does h.264. iPods, iPhones, Zunes, Xboxes, PS3s, PSPs, Nokias, Palms, every Blu-ray player...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_devices_that_support_H.264/MPEG-4_AVC [wikipedia.org]
To think h.264 is somehow limited to Apple is kind of nutty.
byrawler ( 1005089 ) writes:
Interestingly, sites implementing H.264 will not really find a big market. (At least, initially). According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers [wikipedia.org] and it's sources, 1 out of 10 users actually run a browser that will support the video-tag with h.264 in the near future. The Theora combo on the other hand will soon be supported by for 1 in 4 viewers.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is a combo. It should not be difficult to figure using Javascript what type of dev
byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
But not necessarily because they're 'evil'. Free Software has nostrategy for hardware. It has no coherent strategy for what it wants. It's not looking to the future of what it can be and what it wants to do. It's not enough to have a 'me too' mentality. (That's also what's killing Microsoft!)
And in simple terms, as a business, I wouldn't want that kind of thinking in my products.
bygbarules2999 ( 1440265 ) writes:
How can free software have a strategy for hardware at all? It's free software, not free hardware.
Again, this isn't just free software that licensing this will damage. End users will pay the price for licensing. It's not free; not even freeware.
And no, "free software" as a collective is not going in one direction. When the hell has any one type of software ever done that? Is "propietary software" going in one direction, too? Sure, parts have objectives - Gnome is going their pretty nifty Gnome Shell (which has no "me too" in it, I can assure you) and KDE is simply interested in polishing what they've got so far. The Linux kernel is working out filesystems and making things faster, all the while adding drivers. As a collective, these projects are making progress, but not in any distinct fashion. But then again, are all of the programs installed on the average Windows box also cohesively working as a team? I dare say not. You have a double standard for free software because you lump them together as if they should be a team, which is ludicrous at best.
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byChabil Ha' ( 875116 ) writes:
You don't think Microsoft is in cahoots with hardware makers??? You better believe it. Software has been and always will be inextricably tied to hardware. The PC revolution happened not because of software, but because of the comoditization of the hardware. We're seeing it again with smart phones.
The Linux kernel is working out filesystems and making things faster, all the while adding drivers.
Drivers? For what? Hardware?
But then again, are all of the programs installed on the average Windows box also cohesively working as a team?
Microsoft has developed a successful platform, not because of its technical merits, but because it writes software for cheap hardware. It makes writing for that platform extremely e
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