Yeah one of the reasons I always throw my hat in with h.264 in these discussions is because of the practical reasons why h.264 is easier for almost everyone, at least until such a time as h.264 licensing actually sucks rather than just theoretically sucks.
Im still glad Google appear to be doing this with VP8 because I never thought Theora was good enough from a technical/quality/filesize perspective, so if there is to be a truly open alternative and a prolonged struggle to get it accepted by most browsers & devices, at least make it a good one. I do not recognise the sides in the battle quite like you have stated them. Whilst its true that Apple were the first to really start pushing h.264, and are the most likely not to allow other formats on their mobile devices, many other important players in this game support h.264. Microsoft already showed their hand - they are supporting H.264 in IE9. They already support it in Silverlight and the XBox360, and I believe Windows Phone 7 devices will be able to play it. It really will be interesting to see what happens with browsers, Google will certainly make Chrome attractive by presumably supporting all 3 of the formats we are talking about, some others may follow suite as a result, or if h.264 dominates html5 video on the web then Firefox may end up having to do a workaround to provide support too, such as relying on the OS or a plugin to do the job. Flash is a big winner so long as there is html5 video codec mess in the browser arena. This is another reason I dont want the battle to be too complex & prolonged. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In [email protected], Rupert Howe <rup...@...> wrote: > > I hadn't seen this news. But I'd been thinking about it only a couple > of days ago, wondering if they were going to do it, after their move > towards ogg. > > I'm so bored by the idea of even more epic codec battles. Apple/ > Safari/iPhone/iPad in h264 versus Google/Chrome/Phones/Set Top Box/etc > in ogg/vp8. Versus Microsoft and whatever they choose to do. No > compatibility between browsers for HTML5. > Seems like Apple are hardening their position on various things, and > so are Google, Adobe, etc. Pretty boring for all of us, having to > cater for all or pick sides. > > Great that Google Open Sourced VP8, though. A bright spot in all of > this, hopefully. > > Rupert > http://twittervlog.tv > > > On 12 Apr 2010, at 23:55, Michael Verdi wrote: > > > This is pretty awesome: > > http://newteevee.com/2010/04/12/google-to-open-source-vp8-for-html5-video/ > > That could seriously change the codec equation for the better. > > > > - Verdi > > > > -- > > Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia & > > Lymphoma Society. > > http://training.michaelverdi.com > > > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
