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"(I'll note again my personal pet peeve of using a non-open standard like H.264 while claiming it is open. If your customers value open standards so much, perha

"(I'll note again my personal pet peeve of using a non-open standard like H.264 while claiming it is open. If your customers value open standards so much, perhaps you should use them, no?)" Completely agree. The marketing people have come in on this whole html5 thing and make using the proprietary H.264 seem open even though it is no more open then flash..

count 17y ago
H.264 is OPEN. It's just not FREE. There's a big difference in the two.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  It's not an "open standard" according to most definitions, just a "standard": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
  - Terretta 17y ago
    A careful reading of your link seems to support parent's comment.
    - smackfu 17y ago
      That link has 14 different definitions of "open standard".
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        And 12 say "open standards" can't have patent royalties (i.e. H.264 is not an open standard). 1, which just happens to be a statement from a body that issues patent royalty bearing telecommunication standards, and which is explicitly responding to industry moves that prompted the other 12 definitions of "open standards" says, actually our standards have always been "open" and they include patent royalties. Note that no other such body I'm aware of (such as ISO, MPEG, IETF) declares their royalty bearing standards as "open standards". (The other one is just a historical curiosity, like someone referring to their source code being "open" years before "open source" was a thing)
- jorgecastillo 17y ago
  Flash may be FREE but only for Windows, Mac OS X And Linux users(and it does a poor job in the last two). Everyone else has to live with out flash or pray that gnash works if they really need the functionality. I think I rather have widespread HTML5 use even it means widespread H.264. Even if the worst comes to be they can't possibly have the money and time it takes to sue all the millions of H.264 users there will be. On top of it different countries have different laws.
Terretta 17y ago
This isn't HTML5 marketing, and proprietary and open are not polar opposites. HTML5 offers a new "video" tag syntax that doesn't specify what file container (think .flv or .mp4) or codec (think VP6 or H.264) must be able to be played by that video tag. Flash Player, Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and the like, are multimedia playback technologies that can be embedded in a web page using an object or embed tag, each with its own complicated syntax the web browser can try to support. The HTML5 video tag is intended to replace that generic object embed syntax with something more rationally video-specific. Meanwhile, H.264 is a compression algorithm specification, like MPEG4, VC-1, or VP6. Flash Player used to decode and playback On2's proprietary VP6 codec, which only a couple vendors were licensed to support. That was not "open" at all. At present, Microsoft's IE9, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari play back H.264-encoded video through the video tag, and Adobe plays back H.264 encoded video in its recent Flash Players. These companies famously compete, yet all are supporting the same video compression specification, suggesting it's documented enough and licensed enough to freely support. Having to generate an Ogg file containing Theora encoded video to make the HTML5 video tag work across the major browsers is a throwback to the days of having to generate a RealMedia, Windows Media, and QuickTime file. Web video needs to pick a format so the whole ecosystem can optimize around it.
- smackfu 17y ago
  Not specifying any common required video codec was a real failure by the working group. What good is a standardized video tag if the actual contents can be random? http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-Jun...

count 17y ago

H.264 is OPEN. It's just not FREE. There's a big difference in the two.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
It's not an "open standard" according to most definitions, just a "standard": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
- Terretta 17y ago
  A careful reading of your link seems to support parent's comment.
  - smackfu 17y ago
    That link has 14 different definitions of "open standard".
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      And 12 say "open standards" can't have patent royalties (i.e. H.264 is not an open standard). 1, which just happens to be a statement from a body that issues patent royalty bearing telecommunication standards, and which is explicitly responding to industry moves that prompted the other 12 definitions of "open standards" says, actually our standards have always been "open" and they include patent royalties. Note that no other such body I'm aware of (such as ISO, MPEG, IETF) declares their royalty bearing standards as "open standards". (The other one is just a historical curiosity, like someone referring to their source code being "open" years before "open source" was a thing)
jorgecastillo 17y ago
Flash may be FREE but only for Windows, Mac OS X And Linux users(and it does a poor job in the last two). Everyone else has to live with out flash or pray that gnash works if they really need the functionality. I think I rather have widespread HTML5 use even it means widespread H.264. Even if the worst comes to be they can't possibly have the money and time it takes to sue all the millions of H.264 users there will be. On top of it different countries have different laws.

Terretta 17y ago

This isn't HTML5 marketing, and proprietary and open are not polar opposites. HTML5 offers a new "video" tag syntax that doesn't specify what file container (think .flv or .mp4) or codec (think VP6 or H.264) must be able to be played by that video tag. Flash Player, Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and the like, are multimedia playback technologies that can be embedded in a web page using an object or embed tag, each with its own complicated syntax the web browser can try to support. The HTML5 video tag is intended to replace that generic object embed syntax with something more rationally video-specific. Meanwhile, H.264 is a compression algorithm specification, like MPEG4, VC-1, or VP6. Flash Player used to decode and playback On2's proprietary VP6 codec, which only a couple vendors were licensed to support. That was not "open" at all. At present, Microsoft's IE9, Google's Chrome, and Apple's Safari play back H.264-encoded video through the video tag, and Adobe plays back H.264 encoded video in its recent Flash Players. These companies famously compete, yet all are supporting the same video compression specification, suggesting it's documented enough and licensed enough to freely support. Having to generate an Ogg file containing Theora encoded video to make the HTML5 video tag work across the major browsers is a throwback to the days of having to generate a RealMedia, Windows Media, and QuickTime file. Web video needs to pick a format so the whole ecosystem can optimize around it.

smackfu 17y ago
Not specifying any common required video codec was a real failure by the working group. What good is a standardized video tag if the actual contents can be random? http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-Jun...