Microsoft did two things today. First, it released an H.264 plugin for HTML5 video for Google’s Chrome web browser which makes use of Media Foundation. The usefulness of this plugin is limited, however, since it’s only for Windows 7 users. Much more interesting is that Microsoft has opened the door to out-of-the-box WebM/VP8 support in Internet Explorer 9.
Plugin for Chrome on Windows 7
Let’s start with the plugin, just to get it out of the way. Like its Firefox counterpart, it allows Chrome to play H.264 content wrapped in the HTML5 video tag using the native Media Foundation codec included in Windows. Also like its Firefox counterpart, it’s only available for Windows 7 users, greatly limiting its usefulness.
“Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video,” details Claudio Caldato, principal program manager at Microsoft’s Interoperability Strategy Team, “We believe that Windows customers should be able to play mainstream HTML5 video and, as we’ve described in previous posts, Internet Explorer 9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec.”
Much more interesting is a post on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Blog, written by Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, which seems to open the door a little bit towards future out-of-the-box support for WebM/VP8 in Internet Explorer 9, which would put WebM at the same level of support as H.264. In the post, Microsoft covers several concerns it deems key to WebM/VP8’s viability as a codec for HTML5 video. It also details that Microsoft has been helping Google in making sure WebM/VP8 performs great on Windows.
Working together with Google
I’m quite excited about the cooperation between Google and Microsoft, as it shows that Microsoft is open to WebM/VP8, out-of-the-box or otherwise, which is good news for those of us caring about the openness of the web. H.264 proponents such as Ars’ Peter Bright and John Gruber won’t be so happy with this news, as it undermines their hopes for a web shackled to H.264, a proprietary, closed and patented technology overseen by a known patent troll.
“Our commitment to play WebM videos in IE9 for users who have installed WebM demonstrates our approach,” Hachamovitch writes, “We have worked closely with Google to help them deliver a WebM implementation on Windows and Google engineers are on the Microsoft campus this week; we appreciate their positive feedback to date around this work.”
This indicates to me that there is close cooperation between Google and Microsoft, with Google’s ultimate goal being the inclusion of WebM/VP8 in Internet Explorer 9. This belief is further strengthened by the rest of the blog post, which posits three concerns regarding WebM/VP8 Microsoft deems valid. Hachamovitch addresses these concerns in the blog post, and even offers a few olive branches.
Three Concerns
The three concerns listed by Microsoft sound valid, but conveniently enough, the Redmond company does omit a few very important details – which is sad because most of the post is quite valid and constructive.
First, Microsoft wonders “who bears the liability and risk for intellectual property?” This is a question that has been raised quite a few times, but most of the time, it was raised by the MPEG-LA itself. This organisation has been lobbing threats into the video community for over a decade now, but has never been able to substantiate any of these claims. I’m fairly certain Google’s due diligence has ensured no MPEG-LA patents were infringed upon; on top of that, WebM’s source code has been out for a long time now, yet nobody has been able to find anything.
Then there’s the threat of unknown patent holders. This threat is definitely real, but here’s the real kicker, the thing nor Hachamovitch nor H.264 proponents ever mention: these patents threaten H.264 just as much as they do WebM/VP8. Buying a license from the MPEG-LA in no way indemnifies you from these possible unknown patents.
Still, Microsoft would like to see a patent indemnification from Google (even if the MPEG-LA doesn’t give you one), and is willing to give something in return. “To make it clear that we are fully willing to participate in a resolution of these issues, Microsoft is willing to commit that we will never assert any patents on VP8 if Google will make a commitment to indemnify us and all other developers and customers who use VP8 in the future. We would only ask that we be able to use those patent rights if we are sued first by somebody else,” Hachamovitch states, “If Google would prefer a patent pool approach, then we would also agree to join a patent pool for VP8 on reasonable licensing terms so long as Google joins the pool and is able to include all other major providers of playback software and devices.”
Second, Microsoft wonders “when and how does Google make room for the Open Web Standards community to engage genuinely?” This is a very valid concern, and I hope Google is addressing this one. The source code to WebM is currently considered to be the ‘standard’, and it’s developed by Google. It would be wise for Google to hand over governance of WebM to the community, and turn it into a proper open standard by submitting it to standards bodies.
However, here’s yet another kicker, another one nor Hachamovitch nor H.264 proponents ever mention: despite claims to the contrary, H.264 is not necessarily an open standard either. You see, many important bodies consider being royalty-free a key component of the definition of open standard, such as the European Union, the Open Source Initiative, and heck, even Microsoft itself. In other words, complaining that WebM isn’t “open” is valid but moot when compared to H.264, which isn’t open either.
Still, this little lie of omission doesn’t negate Microsoft’s point, which is a valid one. Open source, not patent encumbered, and royalty-free is great, but turning WebM over to the community would be even better – if only to shut up the Grubers and Brights of this world.
Another lie of omission in this blog post, and indeed in just about any pro-H.264 article, is the fact that the W3C cannot accept H.264 as part of any web standard, since W3C requires everything to be royalty-free. This is a very important detail that I can’t reiterate often enough. People like Gruber brag about the importance of web standards compliance, and lament anyone who doesn’t, yet when it is inconvenient for them to follow these same standards, they will disregard them without second thought.
The last concern raised by Microsoft is also valid, and deals with hardware support for WebM and VP8: “what is the plan for restoring consistency across devices, web services, and the PC?” Here, too, Microsoft is being rather disingenuous by omitting several important facts.
First, support by hardware makers for WebM is massive. Every major chip maker except for Intel has committed themselves to supporting WebM in their devices, and many of them will release chips with VP8 encode and decode support starting in the first quarter of this year. Since moving the web over to WebM has always been a process with a time frame of a few years, I’d say Google and chip makers are right on schedule.
Opening that damn door
While Microsoft’s blog post is filled with lies of omission (is that even possible? Filing something with stuff that’s omitted?), the concerns raised are still valid and need to be addressed by Google. My personal guess is that, considering the apparently close cooperation between the two companies on the issue of HTML5 video, Google is well aware of these concerns, and is busy addressing them together with Microsoft. This blog post is probably Microsoft’s attempt to put some pressure on Google to speed everything up.
So yes, contrary to how other sites are reporting this, I genuinely believe that Google and Microsoft are working towards bringing out-of-the-box support for WebM to Internet Explorer 9. There’s things to be gained here for both companies: Google gets incredibly wide support for its new format, while Microsoft gets to brag about having the only browser that supports both. It would also create considerable goodwill for the company, which is something it needs now more than ever, with IE’s share dropping like a brick on Monday.
To answer the question: no one. Who are exactly the same group of people who bears the liability and risk for consumers, businesses and developers of H.264
That aside, nice use of a loaded question. What intellectual property issues do Microsoft believe require resolving here?
If they do though, that would be really cool.
Also, I thought MPEGLA did indemnify people from unknown patents.
Nope, not at all:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx
Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?
A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. The purpose of the License is to offer a convenient licensing alternative to everyone on the same terms and to include as much essential intellectual property as possible for their convenience. Participation in the License is voluntary on the part of essential patent holders, however.
Patent holders can request damages for uses “up to now”, and either licensing of the patent for the future or that the patented invention is no longer used.
How should anyone indemnify against that?
Patent holder comes up, requests gazillions of USD for the violations up to now from vendor (cut down to something slightly more reasonable by some judge) and that they cease to use the patent (for however long the patent continues to grant the monopoly).
So now the MPEG-LA not only pays for damages but also for lost income by its licensee because they have to stop using the licensed technology (eg. h.264)?
Also note that patent licenses need not be non-discriminatory: Some rogue patent holder could put mpeg-la licensees out of the market selectively (by refusing to license), while licensing its patent for others (even for free, except when doing business with the victim).
As a enduser finally I’m happy that I would be able view WebM & H.264 content in all the browser. Including IE 9.
Thanks
Edited 2011-02-02 18:00 UTC
The only culprit remaining is Apple.
So the only people left out are cultists.
I see no problem.
(semi-sarcastic)
… are Windows XP users “cultists” now?
No, just… fighting to support something that doesn’t want to support them, like classic Amiga users.
They exist, but there’s no reason to hold back everyone else.
Hell, why would anyone use Internet Explorer in the first place???
Seriously, Microsoft doesn’t care about XP any more, give it up. Leave Windows, or upgrade. It’s over. The battle is lost.
… or run Opera, Chrome or Firefox 4 as your web browser.
No point talking to me …I don’t run XP. However a significant slice of those who access the web still do.
So. you knew about the alternatives, and don’t use XP…
Just trolling, then?
I know people use XP. My statements on XP users still stand.
It’s obsolete.
Should it be? Not my decision.
Not even the users’ decision. It’s Microsoft’s decision, and it’s each user’s decision whether or not to use their software.
All of this is perfectly correct (except the bit about trolling).
However, your original comment which kicked off this whole sub-thread was, and I quote:
My point was that your original claim was incorrect. The people left out are not simply those who you would label “cultists” … there are also those people who choose to still use XP.
Funnily enough, these two groups, both those who you would label “cultists” and those people who choose to still use XP, still both comprise of people. Hence, there is a problem.
You see, my non-trolling interest is people … not corporate profits but people, and their needs and interests. So there you go.
Edited 2011-02-03 04:08 UTC
You lack a sense of humour.
I still don’t understand how XP users are left out at all. They are free to run Chrome or Firefox 4. I guess what you really meant was IE8 users who refuse to use any other browser? Why should we care about them, again?
Edited 2011-02-03 05:49 UTC
Look at the topic title … XP users are left out of IE9. XP users are just as much end users as anyone else.
Edited 2011-02-03 08:34 UTC
Original post is this:
Which only mentions IE9 incidentally, it’s about html5 video, which is available in several browsers on XP. If this was about IE9 only, then it’s not just XP users left out, but also Linux and OSX.
Edited 2011-02-03 09:00 UTC
Topic title is this: “Microsoft Opens Door to Out-of-the-box WebM Support in IE9”
Topic is about IE9 only, and hence Windows 7/Vista users only. XP users are left out.
Linux users are not left out, as they already enjoy Out-of-the-box WebM Support.
PS: XP users become important to this topic, because they give the lie to misdirection such as this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20030360-264.html
“And the move also points a way through the video codec mess that currently prevails on the Web. Microsoft, and possibly Apple, could offer H.264 plug-ins for use by browsers that don’t support it, and Google could offer WebM plug-ins for the opposite situation. Indeed, Microsoft said Google is working on such a plug-in for Internet Explorer on Windows. “
The “way through the codec mess” is for web video providers wanting to use HTML5 to use WebM. This is because XP users cannot use IE9, nor can they use Microsoft plugins for HTML5/H.264 for Chrome or Firefox. If XP users use IE6/IE7/IE8 they cannot use HTML5 at all, and if they use Firefox, Opera or Chrome they can only play HTML5/WebM.
Edited 2011-02-03 10:03 UTC
Linux doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for _websites_.
What version/distro/_browser_ are you talking about?
Stop speaking contrarian nonsense.
My actual comment was: “Linux users are not left out, as they already enjoy Out-of-the-box WebM Support.”
This is perfectly correct, and it is taken from the title of the topic. If you install a current Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware or whatever, you will in almost all cases get libvpx installed by default. This constitutes “Out-of-the-box WebM Support” for the system. You can download a .webm media file, and play it in your media player.
The last round of common Linux distributions mentioned above came out late last year. Many of these ship Firefox as the default browser, and the current release of Firefox late last year was Firefox 3.6.something. That version of the browser did not support WebM out-of-the-box. To play WebM in Firefox one upgraded to a beta version of Firefox or installed a plugin to play video via the system media player (neither of which was difficult to do), or alternatively one installed Chromium or Chrome.
However, having said that, current beta releases of the upcoming round of Linux distributions often include Firefox 4.0 betas, in anticipation of the imminent release of Firefox 4.0.
Here is an example:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06490
“The technology preview showcases what will be inside the first Mandriva 2011 alpha release. It already comes with RPM 5, native systemd, NetworkManager support, KDE 4.6.0, kernel 2.6.37, Firefox 4b10, X.Org Server 1.9, Clementine 0.6 and lots of updated packages. Also, this technology preview shows a preview of the new way we are thinking on how to run and install the Mandriva desktop. It will be possible to use the same Mandriva image to run it live, from either a CD-ROM or a Flash drive, or install it, all from the same image.”
This will bring Out-of-the-box support for WebM on _websites_ directly in to the default out-of-the-box installed web browser.
Edited 2011-02-03 22:05 UTC
A base Debian install does _not_ come with a web browser, or even X.
Same with Slackware, Arch, Gentoo…
You say false, I say no thankya.
“Many Linux distributions come with WebM support” would be correct. You did not say that.
Shaddap, shuttin’ up.
!@^$)@&$%…Goooood. [/Kosh]
Yeah, god forbid me missing out on the tsunami of videos that are available in WebM as we speak.
Yeah, like… YOUTUBE.
That just means he can keep using Flash.
Until Steve bans it on MacOSX too.
Safari plays all its HTML5 media using QuickTime. Install a QuickTime component that supports WebM playback and Safari will play WebM video. Such a component has been available since August.
There is no real qualitative difference between how one can playback WebM in Safari or IE9.
Apple is a culprit because of iOS, not because of OSX.
Apple is a culprit because of iOS, not because of OSX.
I am quite sure Apple will roll out support for WebM on iOS quite soon, but as they are so good at milking the cow they will only allow WebM on new hardware and using that as one of the selling features. You know the whole “Upgrade to the NEW iPhone 5 and get EVEN BROADER support for online videos” all the while deliberately not enabling the support on older devices.
They will get HW support for it anyway, since Apple buys off-the-shelf graphical chips, and the makers of those have all pledged to include WebM support.
Are you aware of the change of temperatures in Hell now ?
Apple is a culprit because of iOS, not because of OSX. [/q]
As I view high quality H.264 videos on my iPhone 4, the thought that Apple is ‘a culprit’ re iOS never crosses my mind…..only the satisfaction of a well-engineered solution that doesn’t kill battery life.
It isn’t a well-engineered solution at all if it doesn’t accomodate a very large contingent of users (Windows XP users), and it doesn’t allow one of the major browser writers (non-profit Mozilla) to implement a solution.
On your limited-size iPhone 4 screen, if a player (especially one with GPU hardware acceleration of rendering) were allowed:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Mozilla-releases-Firefox-4-B…
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/02/latest-firefox-beta…
WebM videos would be rendered with every bit of the same quality as H.264, to the extent that you could not tell the difference in a blind test.
Edited 2011-02-03 11:46 UTC
Although it is absolutely true to make the observation that XP is basically at end of life, it doesn’t matter that this is so.
The fact remains that about half of the web browser clients in use right now, today, are browsers installed under Windows XP.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201001-201101
Almost all of these users cannot play HTML5/h.264 web video.
If you were to serve HTML5/h.264 web video, that is a very large set of clients to miss out on.
What are you trying to say?
So there many users of a legacy OS.
So many of them aren’t using a good browser.
AND?
Do you have a point?
Edited 2011-02-04 03:03 UTC
Absolutely there is a point.
If you have a website, and you wish to put a video on it, you have to ask yourself “what is the best method for reaching the most users”?
At the moment, the answer is “Flash, with video encoded in H.264”. This will cost you however, because you have to pay royalties for sending out video encoded in H.264.
There is at the moment a big push on to move to HTML5, and get rid of the requirement for a Flash plugin for browser clients. If YouTube switch over to HTML5, this will start to happen in a big way. The answer to your question could change … Flash may soon become no longer the best way to deliver video.
If that happens and users start dropping Flash support in their web browsers, what would be the best way to deliver your video to the most users then?
Given the large number of users still running XP, the answer to this question would then become “HTML5/WebM”. This has a bonus advantage to you because you no longer need to pay royalties for your videos sent over the web.
This is the point.
Edited 2011-02-04 05:32 UTC
…Perhaps SAYING that would have helped, because nothing in your original post(s) indicated anything of that nature.
Not even close.
Troll.
Go away.
XP will only decrease over time, so it is not a valid reason to push a video format going forward. You have to face the reality that H.264 is already a defacto standard for quality video in just about every arena (web and non-web).
Laserdisk had a 10% penetration in Japan.
When the rest of the world went to DVD, a number of people ignored it as a fad, like 8-track tapes.
At first, people complained about the quality. Then encoders/players improved, DTS audio was made available, more studios started putting out anamorphic transfers, (which were very rare in the LD market) and DVD was finally accepted as superior, and LD went by the wayside.
You can thrash about all you want, but people like their money, and will keep it if possible.
A web standard must be open, by definition.
2 + 2 !=5
Stop pretending that there are a huge number of users who care about HTML5 video support.
Those who don’t have a browser that is capable of playing WebM (IE7/8), will mostly likely have their content served to them in Flash instead.
It is a few lines of Javascript to detect whether a browser can do html 5 video.
Stop making up problems that won’t actually exist.
It’s not a problem of what only you need. It’s a problem for developers, who can’t use one format to deliver to all users (WebM), and because of that need to clutter servers with a whole bunch of duplicate options. So Apple is a culprit for causing this problem.
It is a well engineered solution, the problem is legal, not technical.
However he does not have a hardware decoder for WebM in his iPhone, so his battery will last all of 5 minutes playing it.
Any idea how to do it with mobile Safari on iOS? That’s the real problem.
How is Google’s WebM not open? Not to sound like a Google fanboi, but thats a really stupid thing to say. WebM is under the BSD license meaning anyone and everyone can use it in any type of product. Just because Google is lax about working with the community has no impact on WebM being open. Now you could say Google is being a bad community member, but then again, they bought WebM and turned around and gave it away for free.
Who said that, and where?
If you read the article, that was one of the claims that Microsoft was making against Google. That they weren’t really being open because they weren’t working with the community.
What community?
How is H264 any different…
I didn’t think someone would comment on FUD at this point in history, so I thought it was a comment on something that… mattered.
Sry.
MS is just trying to make themselves look relevant. For me that stopped being a possibility years ago. They can release anything they want. I’m so not interested.
Yet you’re interested enough to post that you aren’t. Hmmm….
Edited 2011-02-03 11:54 UTC
Yes because M$ are have the proprietry suckwarez …
If you actually paid some attention to what Microsoft are doing with Web Development tools, they are doing some damn interesting stuff. However many on OSAlert have a “Anything but Microsoft attitude”.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/
Have a read. Some very interesting stuff that makes dev’s lives easier.
Coming soon: An all new hello-we’re-just-installing-stuff-without-your-permission-don’t-mind -us war.
You mean that everyone that has Quicktime on his system will soon have iTunes, Safari and a WebM plugin for all?
wait, would that be a good or a bad thing?
Yeah, what is wrong with user installed software. Flash doesn’t work out of the box in any major browswer either, but users still manage to somehow install it when it is needed. I do not see the problem the of having users download needed codecs, as long as the browser like IE9 (and my own Konqueror incidentily) just plays anything it has a codec for.
I _do_ see a lot problems in making browsers mediaplayers and ship mediaplaying capabilities with the browser.
Note that IE9 won’t actually play everything you have a codec for. MS is limiting it to only supporting their own h264 codec and Google’s WebM codec. Anything else is ignored. That’s probably a good decision on their part, considering all the buggy and security-hole ridden codecs the average user has on their machine.
Where does it say in the article that h264 makes use of DirectShow given that DirectShow has been deprecated in favour of Media Foundation?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb970511%28v=VS.85%…
Whoops, sorry. Should be Media Foundation.
I disagree profoundly with this. It’s either a misunderstanding/ignorant, or just plain lying. I’m sorry but the reference implementation’s code is the standard, which is why it’s so important the code is open. History is littered with examples, many from Microsoft, of what happens when the reference implementation doesn’t exactly match the “standard’s documents”, or the specifics of everything aren’t all documented. MS themselves have used these standards’ holes to create deliberately incompatible versions of standards. Adhering to the letter of the standard, but not to the spirit of it (“Work-to-rule”). There is no shortage of standards that are documented one way, but everything does it another because that’s what the reference implimentation does. This is much harder to deal with when the reference implimentation isn’t open code, just ask the Wine/Samba guys. The best that can happen is the docs are updated to what the reference implimentation does, the other way round isn’t going to happen. Google know this.
There is no shortage of standards that are defined by what the first implementation does. Much of POSIX is a massive example of this.
In short, think of the reference impliementations code as documentation so good, it can be compiled.
To me, all this comes under, “read the code, not the comments”, the comments are just to help you read the code, not to be read instead. The code is king as that is what is run.
To be honest, doesn’t matter what MS say now anyway, they know they have to have WebM. WebM now seams unstoppable.
So the code is the spec? There’s no spec that one can implement independent of Google’s code?
ffmpeg had an implementation within a few weeks. Seems to me the “spec” is better than most “specs” other companies put out.
eh? Plenty of different code that takes the same input and delivers the same output. Google’s code’s output from the input is the correct output. Just have to match it, looking over the source of google’s code will help you, but you don’t have to copy the code, though nothing is stopping you.
Not sure I agree, but comments, if they were written as they should be, are the first expression of the idea being implemented before code is written. We are humans before being coders and natural language text is closer to that condition than code. Not everybody, even amongst the most experienced read code like (or better than) they read plain text. At least for me, it’s easier to read a two-line comment about what a function is supposed to do than to read its code, follow calls, deduce possibly wrong things because not all details are known, before understanding the intent.
Out of a recent experience, I think people excel at being bad at comments, that’s why the code is still king and required days of reading before I had a good idea of what was of no interest at all. If you ask me, people are also bad at writing standards: I would only use MUST and MUST NOT, no should, may, etc. and include a way for each vendor/participant to implement extensions.
I have seen documents written before code, explaining what the project will be, why it’s need, and very roughly how it will be done (I think any more then rough will be a lie, unless it’s a clean-up rewrite). I have never seen comments written before code. What I have seen is code bases with no comments at all. Comments saying one thing when the code clearly does another, etc etc. I’ve seen code rewritten/refactored just so it was easier to read. In fact, I’ve done this more then a few times myself, often finding bugs while I’m at it (showing it needed doing). One code base from a few years back stands out in my mind where you literally couldn’t read the code for the comments. It was like the result of interweaving a document and code. The best I’ve heard said is the “what” should be clear from the naming, the “how” should be clear from code, the “why”, if not clear from the “what” and the “how” should then be documented. Sparingly one line comments in the code is ok, small blocks of comment above a function is ok, but don’t obscure code with comments. Don’t write documents in comments of code. Short and sweet is the key. Comments fall out of date quickly and soon become misleading. To me, the more the comments, the more it’s saying refactoring is needed.
Some of us are dyslexic and find the code clearer than the comments.
Why do I feel like we mean the same thing? A wise man would say “probably because you do”.
Just an addition: “Comments saying one thing when the code clearly does another” is the second biggest use I see to the comments (like the function comments I was referring to in my previous comment); the contradiction helps me find bugs! The first use I see: it helps me get down to the matter of interest faster and more easily.
If the problem is purely that the comment is wrong, which is normally the case, I’m not sure that’s really a bug. Just a case of correct or delete comment. Don’t think any one would argue a wrong comment is better than no comment.
I often write comments before the code…
You make an outline of comments, then you fill in the code between the comments, and it is essentially self-documenting as to what the code is supposed to do.
Obviously those aren’t the only types of comments that there are, but I do that, and I know other programmers that do that too.
Each to their own, but I’ve not worked with any I can think of who work like that. Do you keep updating the comments or remove them as if they where scaffolding?
Usually I leave them. Those tend to be fairly short and non-specific as to the means. They say what it is doing, not how, so rarely need changed, since “what” a section is doing is usually pretty static. You may rewrite the whole thing three times, but the goal probably doesn’t change.
In contrast, comments that say “how” or “why” something is done I usually add later in the process, are more detailed, and need updated more frequently.
Another reason to keep them in is they tend to be valuable down the road. Asking yourself, “Now what is this trying to accomplish?” is a recurring refrain for me when looking at old code, or someone else’s code. It also helps in case the code starts to drift away from the comment… sometimes the code is actually what has gone wrong (wandered away from its original purpose) not the comment.
Edited 2011-02-03 23:26 UTC
Another one under your belt.
Nowhere in the IE blog post I have found any mention of forthcoming or even possible out-of-the-box support of WebM in IE.
Seems to me Thom made this up.
After reading the article, I’ve seen no change of Microsoft’s position in this issue.
Read my damn article, and you’ll understand. Nowhere did I claim Microsoft actually said that. I *inferred* it. Can you grasp that concept?
They made it clear that they support WebM in IE9.
This would allow third parties like OEM manufacturers to bundle a WebM codec with the system, not unlike what they do with Flash player, Adobe reader, etc.
So for PCs you buy from a store, in the near future you can get Windows 7 with IE9 and WebM out-of-the-box.
It’s only for those who buy retail where it’s not, and you can’t buy a retail copy of Windows with IE9 anyway.
I know there’s little point posting my thoughts here, but that doesn’t stop the rest of you, one-in-ten of whom actually have something valid and interesting to say. But I won’t be hitting this site again, so I might as well say something before I go.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when OSAlert went from being an interesting little site to read about less mainstream OS developments, to an excitable Dutch teenager’s blog, but over the last six months at least, the stupidity level of Thom’s posts – especially with regards to standards – has gone off the charts. And the comments are even worse (except for mine of course; mine are as poignant and awesome as ever).
There’s no evidence that any of you have any real understanding of how real modern media standards are actually established, by whom, or even why.
But I’ll give you a hint – the process doesn’t involve a raging battle between the forces of good and evil, nor is it about big organisations trying to f-ck over consumers.
If you seriously think that Google’s play with VP8 is coming from anywhere other than a deep, abiding, almost autistic self-interest, then you are clearly on some serious drugs.
And not good drugs either – I’m talking the kind of stuff that’s produced in prison toilets.
Namaste, you hopeless dicks.
Hank out.
Of course. Google’s interest is in making the internet as strong as possible, because they realize that’s where they make all their money – by enabling others to use the internet. (through search)
For that reason, they want to make sure that the next innovator (i.e. kid in a basement somewhere) is able to do whatever they want on the web, and not have certain things walled off only to existing parties who can afford to pay for all the licensing required.
The fact that Google has decided that an open video format is good for them doesn’t mean it’s bad for us – in fact it’s actually great for us as well. The people it’s bad for are those previously mentioned existing parties who have already invested heavily in the alternative. And perhaps very slightly annoying to the webmasters, etc., who have to keep track of all this.
Here is Google’s license terms for WebM:
http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/
“Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer implementations of this specification”
In this context, “You” means everybody. Google garnts these permissions to everybody. BTW, the only way for anyone to lose these permissions (the bracketed clause after “irrevocable”) is for someone to sue Google over WebM.
WebM is indeed in Google’s self interest. However, Google doesn’t happen to make money from charging people for video codecs. Rather, Google makes more money the more often and more freely more people use the web.
Happily, that means that insofar as WebM goes, Google’s best interest, expressed quite succuinctly in the “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free” terms of their license grant, happen to align exactly with the best interests of the overwhelmingly vast majority of people on the planet.
Edited 2011-02-05 13:05 UTC
It can be readily asserted that as time passes, XP users will purchase replacement computers; most of them running Windows 7 or OSX (or both); and even the least powerful of these will run Hi Def H.264 video out of the box. Of course, it’s fine for Google to act in its own self interest. However, it is chasing a high speed H.264 train that left the station a couple of years….just sayin’
I’m mildly autistic, and take offense at this.
<quote>At the moment, the answer is “Flash, with video encoded in H.264”. This will cost you however, because you have to pay royalties for sending out video encoded in H.264.</quote>
Only if you charge the viewer for it.
To simplify somewhat:
No royalties on video shorts (12 minutes or less)
Royalties on “feature length” titles are 2% of the retail price or 2 cents each, whichever is less.
Royalties on subscription sales are $0/yr for less than 100,001 subscribers.
If you are Disney, your H.264 royalties are capped at $6.5 million/yr.