HTML5 video war heats up as H.264 goes free

they at it again with another format war

beta max vs VHS or HD DVD vs Blueray all over again - oh boy

Mark

By mprltd on 27 Aug 2010

With H.264 already having large support across other media distribution platforms, with many content providers already having their content in this format, it seems stupid not to support this format in HTML5.

Whilst in theory leaving the video format up to the developer and not having it defined by W3C is good, you get the feeling that it's not going to play out that way. Sure developers can provide multiple format's of their content, but that's additional cost both in production and maintenance of the content as well as the additional storage costs.

By WhiskyFudge on 27 Aug 2010

Trojan

First off, I like H.264 but it is a trojan when it comes to HTML5. It opposes the core principles of HTML which is open and free (not pretending to be free). What's gonna happen after the 4 fake-free years? Developers will have to pass on the cost one way or another to hundreds of millions of web users.

For that reason I hope that WebM will succeed both online and offline while H.264 gets a burial that it deserves.

By zeevro on 28 Aug 2010

Isn't apple on some www board/committee responsible for the development of html5?

How much free content is actually available for free in H.264 compared to WebM?

WebM has been free from the beginning and will remain free - isn't this what annoyed MPEG LA and forced them to release H.264 for free?

By nicomo on 28 Aug 2010

Playback

You said for end users, in the middle.

The codec is free for playback. Commercial use still needs a licence for recording video (the likes of film companies, Blu-Ray, Hulu etc.).

As to HTML, it isn't all about open, it has always used closed formats - look at its use of GIF and JPG as image format standards, neither are/were royalty free, when they were used - in fact, you can use other formats, but it is down to the web developers and the browser writers, which ones are actually used. PNG was developed as an alternative to GIF, because Unisys tried to sue everybody for using it.

What about Flash and Silverlight objects? They are proprietary as well, as is MP3. Nearly all of the codecs and objects are proprietary and the "open" standards aren't that open, or aren't as good.

H.264 has the advantage, that most video chipsets are designed to accelerate it natively, meaning that they need less power to decode H.264 than its rivals. It is also the format used in Flash, by most companies these days.

WebM's disadvantage is, even though Google are opening it up for everybody to use, royalty free, they haven't (yet) done due dilligence on what patents it might infringe - given that it is a branch of the same technology used in H.264, it isn't outside the realms of possibility that it is based on some of the patents held by the MPEGLA. Also, the whole area of video codecs covers a lot of the same ground, so writing a codec on your own, is no guarantee that the codec is patent infringement free.

I hope that it is, and I hope that Google or the EFF can do the due dilligence soon and get the guarantee out there that content producers and users aren't going to get sued somewhere down the line...

(nicomo, Apple sit on the board of HTML and MPEG LA - although they are one of the smallest players in the MPEG LA, as are Microsoft.)

By big_D on 29 Aug 2010

@big_D

Thank you for your comments. It's nice to see a sensible and well reasoned response.

By jgwilliams on 31 Aug 2010

Free lunches for lawyers

The patent system has come to serve big companies and greedy lawyers. I have a solution...

The US government (and others) should pass a law that when some critical technology would be adversely impacted by patent suits, there should be a 'speak now or for ever hold your peace' period of a few months, beyond which all patent suits should be rejected.

Otherwise critical technologies will be held hostage to opportunists, something we cannot allow to happen to internet technologies on which we all depend.

By fogtax on 2 Sep 2010