Bye Bye H.264!

[Michael Haney]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Fred A. Miller <fmiller at lightlink.com> wrote:
> On 05/19/2010 01:17 PM, Michael Haney wrote:
>> Remember when Google bought the company On2 Technologies.  That
>> company has a video codec called VP8, an H.264 competitor which is
>> actually better for streaming HD quality video.  Me and many others
>> suspected that Google was going to make VP8 open-source and push it as
>> an alternative to H.264 and Ogg Theora as the standard of choice for
>> HTML5 Video.
>>
>> We were right!
>>
>> Introducing Googe, Mozilla, and Opera's WebM Project http://www.webmproject.org/
>>
>> Its a royalty-free open video codec based on VP8 for video and Ogg
>> Vorbis for audio.  Google plans to push it heavily as the standard of
>> choice for HTML5 Video and it will be supported by Youtube.
>>
>> The announcement on TechCrunch ...
>> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/webm-google-h-264/
>>
>> This has big implications for Linux where Flash tends to perform
>> poorly.  Since WebM is a free open standard then it could be
>> incorporated into Totem, VLC, Mplayer, and any number of video players
>> on Linux, Mac and Windows.  It can be incorporated into Apple's iPad,
>> iPhone and the iPods that support video.  This is huge news.
>>
>
> See:
> http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=543273659-f09aff1f3240c763b781087d83996fa3-bf&brand=ZDNET&s=5
>
> and:
> http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=543273661-f09aff1f3240c763b781087d83996fa3-bf&brand=ZDNET&s=5
>
> Talk about timely mail.....this right after your post. ;)
>
> Fred
>

Yes, I know!

This can't be anything more than a big WIN for Linux.  Because the
apps in the Google Web Store will run not just in Chrome but pretty
much almost any HTML5 capable web browser.  That means they're
"perfectly cross-platform", it doesn't matter what OS you are using
its the browser that matters.

The WebM Project is a huge WIN for the HTML5 standard.  It keep HTML5
open.  If a royalty based codec were the only one supported for web
video then it would create a situation where you'd have sites that
could deliver video without Flash, and those sites that have no choice
but to use Flash and some different codec because they can't afford
the MPEG-LA royalty fees.  In other words, there would be a class
system on the Internet separating sites that could afford the codec
and those that can't.  Now, that whole argument is moot.  I bet the
MPEG-LA consortium is steaming mad, because this move will cut deeply
into how much they were potentially going to rake in from H.264
royalty fees.  They gotta be stewing in their own juices right now.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking
of morality by religion." ~ Arthur C. Clarke
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and
politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place
for it in the endeavor of science. " ~ Carl Sagan

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