24 ms·

> The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264 You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and prob

by dev_jim 16y ago

> The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264 You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9).

Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
> You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. Well i mentionned it. I'm at least partially intellectually honest :) > Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9) That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are. > There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. I don't think that's true
- dev_jim 16y ago
  > That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are Very true. Our site has had for a while only a couple percent of non 3.5+ Firefox traffic.
- sigzero 16y ago
  There are hardware decoders but nobody uses them at this point. It will be a very long very painful process. I am not sure whether it is good or bad.
patrickaljord 16y ago
> There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. The very article states that there are hardware WebM decoders, not only that but Google is licensing the technology for free as in zero dollars: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...
- ot 16y ago
  But it is not sure whether Apple will adopt them. Could the competition with iPhones have influenced this decision?
- rabidsnail 16y ago
  Licensing isn't the (only) issue for asics. Hardware decoders are only reasonably priced if they're being produced at scale. If I'm a device manufacturer and I have a choice between getting h.264 for free because it's on the SoC I'm using and paying multiple dollars (!) for a WebM decoder, not to mention wasting valuable board space and paying for it to be soldered on, which do you think I'll choose?
  - lukeschlather 16y ago
    Presumably the next Android Dev phone will have a SoC that supports WebM... otherwise yes this move is toothless.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    Someone else's SOC?
    - rabidsnail 16y ago
      Yes. The only smartphone makers that I can think of that design their own chips are Apple and Samsung.
      - trotsky 16y ago
        To clarify, I meant choose option C) a SOC that supported my requirements.
      - dfox 16y ago
        Your assumption is valid only in case when you don't count smartphone makers that actually design their own complete phones and not license baseband implementation from someone :)
  - 16y ago
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
There are already hardware WebM decoders, in fact they've just announced hardware encoders too. They link to a relevant announcement in the linked blog post: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8... And the update rates of Firefox and Chrome and totally different from IE, especially since version 9 doesn't support XP.
bane 16y ago
There aren't _(and probably won't be)_ hardware WebM decoders. http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-availability-of-webm-vp8-video.html http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-availability-of-webm-... The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. We have the IP running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well.
ajb 16y ago
No, there are hardware webm decoders. Eg: "Broadcom Accelerates WebM Video on Mobile Phones" from http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s471536 http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s471536 And that's from eight months ago. Broadcom is a huge maker of mobile SOCs; I haven;t checked the others, but I bet they support webm too.

by dev_jim 16y ago

Raphael_Amiard 16y ago

> You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. Well i mentionned it. I'm at least partially intellectually honest :) > Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9) That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are. > There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. I don't think that's true

dev_jim 16y ago
> That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are Very true. Our site has had for a while only a couple percent of non 3.5+ Firefox traffic.
sigzero 16y ago
There are hardware decoders but nobody uses them at this point. It will be a very long very painful process. I am not sure whether it is good or bad.

patrickaljord 16y ago

> There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. The very article states that there are hardware WebM decoders, not only that but Google is licensing the technology for free as in zero dollars: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...

ot 16y ago
But it is not sure whether Apple will adopt them. Could the competition with iPhones have influenced this decision?
rabidsnail 16y ago
Licensing isn't the (only) issue for asics. Hardware decoders are only reasonably priced if they're being produced at scale. If I'm a device manufacturer and I have a choice between getting h.264 for free because it's on the SoC I'm using and paying multiple dollars (!) for a WebM decoder, not to mention wasting valuable board space and paying for it to be soldered on, which do you think I'll choose?
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  Presumably the next Android Dev phone will have a SoC that supports WebM... otherwise yes this move is toothless.
- trotsky 16y ago
  Someone else's SOC?
  - rabidsnail 16y ago
    Yes. The only smartphone makers that I can think of that design their own chips are Apple and Samsung.
    - trotsky 16y ago
      To clarify, I meant choose option C) a SOC that supported my requirements.
    - dfox 16y ago
      Your assumption is valid only in case when you don't count smartphone makers that actually design their own complete phones and not license baseband implementation from someone :)
- 16y ago

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

There are already hardware WebM decoders, in fact they've just announced hardware encoders too. They link to a relevant announcement in the linked blog post: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8... And the update rates of Firefox and Chrome and totally different from IE, especially since version 9 doesn't support XP.

bane 16y ago

There aren't _(and probably won't be)_ hardware WebM decoders. http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-availability-of-webm-vp8-video.html http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-availability-of-webm-... The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. We have the IP running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well.

ajb 16y ago

No, there are hardware webm decoders. Eg: "Broadcom Accelerates WebM Video on Mobile Phones" from http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s471536 http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s471536 And that's from eight months ago. Broadcom is a huge maker of mobile SOCs; I haven;t checked the others, but I bet they support webm too.