Thanks Ed.
I am a big user of open and free software and standards, where they make sense. There are some places, where it doesn't.
H.264 is one of those, for me. As you stated, with hardware acceleration built into nearly all video chipsets on sale today, it makes sense to support this standard as the default (or one of the defaults).
For me, one of the biggest problems with Ogg Theora is the lack of hardware support. Also, if H.264 is used on my streaming media devices, why should I need a second format for the Internet?
There are some problems with H.264, in its "freeness" as opposed to its openness. But that I can use one format for my Windows, OS X, BluRay and streaming media client and Apple TV mean that I don't have to worry about it.
For my girlfriend, and people like her, it means they switch it on and it works. She has problems understanding how an Apple TV works - it is too complex. For such people, the whole discussion is pretty pointless. Either they can watch videos automatically, or the device doesn't support video. If they need to find an alternate codec or an alternate browser, the site doing the streaming is "broken" and doesn't work.
That it "could be made to work" by searching for the relevant codec is irrelevant. A "missing codec" error means the device or site is irreparably broken.
Unless the hardware manufacturers of media devices (as opposed to computer operating systems) suddenly jump on board with Ogg Theora, I don't see it making enough headway.
Apple and Microsoft are at it again. This time, though, the two archrivals find themselves on the same side (more or less) of a tremendously contentious issue: Which video format will be adopted as the standard for the Internet over the next five (or more) years?
The answer from both companies is H.264. Coincidentally, both Apple and Microsoft issued manifestos announcing that support last week. But how they continued that discussion with developers, partners, and customers is a very different story indeed.
Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash was published on Thursday morning, April 29, although the signature beneath the post simply reads “April, 2010.” It’s mostly a double-barreled blast at Adobe in general and Flash in particular, but references to HTML5 and H.264 are sprinkled throughout the 1681-word post. It’s abundantly clear that Jobs and Apple have placed their bets on H.264: it’s a “more modern format,” and H.264 videos “play perfectly” in Apple’s browser and “look great” on Apple hardware.
On Thursday afternoon, almost lost in the media frenzy over Jobs’ remarks, Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the Internet Explorer division, hit the publish button on a post titled HTML5 Video. At a mere 364 words, Hachamovitch’s remarks got straight to the point:
The future of the web is HTML5. … The HTML5 specification describes video support without specifying a particular video format. We think H.264 is an excellent format. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only.
Despite the similar content, there was one dramatic difference between the two posts. Jobs’ remarks did not include an option for feedback. Hachamovitch’s post did. And as of Sunday evening, roughly 72 hours after the original post was published, it had attracted nearly 200 comments, some of them downright scathing. In addition, tech news sites and blogs offered all sorts of reactions to the post, many of them wildly wrong. So Hachamovitch did something almost unheard of: he published a new post, Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9, addressing many of those comments in detail. (When I asked Hachamovitch last night why he took the time to prepare such a detailed response, he told me: “At the end of the day, we’re building a browser for the Windows customer. Listening to that customer, in whatever form that takes, is not just important, it defines what we’re here to do.”)
I’ve been researching this issue for several weeks now, so I was especially interested in what both companies have to say—and equally interested in the parts they leave out of the discussion. Here’s a summary of some of the key issues in this very controversial discussion. (And if you’re wondering just who the mysterious MPEG LA organization is and why they control the “patent pool” for the H.264 standard, jump to page 3, where I explain.)
Why H.264?
Microsoft delivers software on a scale that is breathtaking. A billion PCs running Windows means a billion copies of one version or another of Internet Explorer. Making architectural decisions for a platform of that size isn’t something that’s done lightly. Apple’s installed base is considerably smaller, but it’s still large, especially when you factor in devices like iPhones and iPads, and its influence among the tech elite is much larger than its market share. For both companies, the decision to embrace H.264 is down to the same two reasons:
First, as Hachamovitch points out, it works—and works well:
[W]e think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems
That performance edge isn’t just from software, either. Just about every modern graphic processing unit (GPU) now has H.264 decoding built into the silicon, and IE9 is going to take advantage of hardware acceleration for graphics and text. Jobs cited performance tests showing that hardware-accelerated H.264 video doubled battery life compared on an iPad compared to the same video not using hardware acceleration.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, the H.264 format has undeniable momentum. Hachamovitch pointed to one recent study from Encoding.com, which estimates that 66 percent of all videos on the web are now available in H.264 formats, up from 31 percent a year ago.
