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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.
byGuspaz ( 556486 ) writes:
They could have simply specified that a browser must support ONE of the two options, h.264 or Theora. This would have at least provided a reference to websites, such that they can guarantee that they need support no more than two codecs. Without a standard, they can't necessarily guarantee that a browser will support either. A third party browser may come by and decide to implement nothing but MJPEG since it isn't specified.
I mean, there are legitimate concerns in both camps. Theora's hardware support is no
bysamkass ( 174571 ) writes:
HTML doesn't specify what image format must be supported (PNG, GIF, JPG, etc); why is video any different? If HTML had specified GIF explicitly up-front, we'd all be in trouble when UniSys became dicks about it.
Let the market decide. If h.264 succeeds despite the extra cost, it means folks found enough value to justify the cost. If DivX or VC1 come out of nowhere to take over the web we won't be left with an out-dated standard. If a sleeper patent hits Theora hard we'll be glad we didn't lock ourselves
byianare ( 1132971 ) writes:
That's a good point, but the bandwidth and storage requirements of images pale in comparison to video. I've had to make sites using GIF for IE6 and PNG for browsers that don't suck (to take advantage of the alpha channel). It was a PITA, but the extra storage requirements were not that big a deal. Doing the same with video would be much more of a problem, even with today's cheap storage.
byBenoitRen ( 998927 ) writes:
Not to mention all the libraries that web browsers would have to ship with to enable playback of all the codecs. And unlike image formats, new codecs get developed all the time.
Now, one could suggest to just use the codecs installed on the system itself. But then we go back to the old situation of having to have a ton of codecs installed and having to hunt for codecs we don't know have, which is always a pain in the behind.
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bygbarules2999 ( 1440265 ) writes:
I can't say much about Windows (I just install VLC), but in Ubuntu, the codecs are just a single "ubuntu-restricted-extras" away, and for all of the video formats it plays it doesn't really take up that much room. Maybe 20 MB?
And there are only two major codecs being discussed now. Websites will flock to whatever most people have installed, so whatever IE and maybe Firefox picks will be first choice. If you force people to install an obscure codec, they don't see your content - bad for traffic.
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