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I can't believe I'm saying this, but I don't see much value in a standard and multiple competing implementations of the same video format. Unlike HTML, there's

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I don't see much value in a standard and multiple competing implementations of the same video format. Unlike HTML, there's only one correct rendering of a video, and the problem is pretty much solved by the first solid portable free decoder. Optimal encoding is an active research topic, but that can rely on whatever the de facto decoder supports.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
In an ideal world all "standards", de facto or de jure, would have two independently developed, open source, BSD licensed implementations as part of the process of standardization. This stops people writing specs that are impossible, or ambiguous. It saves people having to go off and create their own half-baked implementations from scratch. And it serves as as a basic test suite for those occasions when you do actually need to write your own for whatever esoteric reason (to do it in hardware, or a managed language or whatever} as well as testing each other to catch stupid bugs in the implementation and/or spec. The crazy future date that Flash evangelists have been throwing about for when HTML5 will be "finished" is actually the date they expect to have two inter-operable implementations of the entire spec. This is a lofty and noble goal, sadly they just get dinged for it by people who are happy to call Flash "open" while there is still only one complete implementation.