When I received the news of youtube using html 5 for their video streaming I was interested. When I tested it out and saw how much better it worked for me than the flash video I was excited about this new development. My excitement quickly turned to concern when I learned why Mozilla is not supporting this new streaming video format in their Firefox browser.
The html 5 video on youtube and vimeo is using the h.264 codec. Which is closed source and patented. In addition MPEG-LA is charging exhorbant fees to the sum of 5,000,000 annually in order for a software package to be able to support the h.264 codec.
Obviously that is a concern since this company could make it expensive to receive something that most people have been receiving for free. Also the sheer cost of the fee makes it only possible for the big players to enter the market and support this codec. You may have the most brilliant team of programmers and a great product but if you don’t have 5,000,000 you will not be able to support their product. This gives large companines with deep
But here is another side of the issue that many have not considered. Currently the streaming video standard is the flash player. Flash is also a proprietary solution. This means that MPEG-LA is not doing anything that the people at adobe could not do with flash player support. Right now with html 5 using the h.264 codec we have streaming video that works well. And it is supported in Linux through the Chrome browser. If Adobe was left to itself to continue to dominate the market unencumbered with competition they could do the same thing that MPEG-LA is doing and even worse, they hardly support Linux as it is with so many years to get their product working properly and still the same problems.
At least right now their is some competition. Not the kind of competition that the open source community would like to see. But as long as the h.264 codec exist then Adobe is not left to control the market entirely and as long as the Adobe flash format is in existence they force MPEG-LA to find a way to be competitive.
January 26th, 2010 - 3:44 am
Actually unfortunately most flash videos tend to use the h.264 codec behind the scenes anyway. So the mpeg codec fees will still be required if one uses flash
January 26th, 2010 - 5:52 am
The competition is between Adobe and MPEG-LA over two proprietary codecs. That like saying AT&T and Comcast offering the same level of service for the same price but simply carried on different wires is competition. There’s not really an upside to letting h.264 become the de facto HTML5 video format, and it contradicts the W3C’s recommendation anyway, so it is not only contrary to an open web, but is non-compliant. And we all know what non-compliance looks like. (IE anyone?)
January 26th, 2010 - 5:54 am
Microsoft and Oracle Monopoly Power
Microsoft has a $50 billion checking account (billion not million). Larry Ellison owns two 500-foot mega yachts (not one) plus Sun/Java/MySQL. Do the math, Linux idiots, because Microsoft and Oracle own 95% of computing today. Maybe Linux Torvalds can reschedule his competition scheduler?
January 26th, 2010 - 6:35 am
The beauty of the video tag is that a codec can be specified. H.264 may be what google is using, but it’s not required. Due to M$, OGG was stonewalled from passing as the standard. In fact, I don’t even think the video tag is a standard. I think it’s just something the market wants, but M$ refuses to acknowledge. For now, we’ve got Firefox, Opera, and Chromium supporting the video tag (Opera’s next release will, and Chromium’s next release will be solidified as well). As companies and individuals start looking to cut cost, they will move to OGG with the video tag and M$ will either be late (again) or just not be used by most people because of it. After all, doesn’t google have a plugin for IE that frames IE into using web standards?
January 27th, 2010 - 9:42 am
Iceweasel 3.5.6 in Debian testing works. I just tried it out and was happy to see it work with the controls and everything for an Ogg Therora video. There should be a tidal wave of people serving video this way now. Use ffmpeg2theora -v6 to convert your unfriendly camera movies and you have an easy, free way to share. Thanks for mentioning this and looking into the patent issues around H.2.64.
Here is a tag reference page ironically served as asp. Works for me.
March 24th, 2010 - 4:56 am
Let’s not forget the major problem with openness related to audio and video contents : those contents are exactly what some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world absolutely want to control, by not letting us use them freely and by trying not to let us produce them in a free, open way.
Multimedia contents and the ways to access or use them will never be open in any inter-operable form, sorry for your beautiful dreams (which are mine also).
HTML5 is a very good idea, but it will probably not solve the plug-in problem without replacing it with another problem.
May 10th, 2010 - 2:39 pm
I find it annoying that some of the bigcorps are playing games with the online community - look at apple’s refusal to support flash properly - it the dominant standard! We don’t need more standards we just need open standards…
May 24th, 2010 - 1:02 am
Hey all, I’m a noob, but we all must start somewheres. I have an Nvidia 8400 GS that I would like to get working. At least i think it isn’t. I typed…
May 24th, 2010 - 4:17 am
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June 5th, 2010 - 9:10 am
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