4 ms·

As the end user...I only care about which one gives me the best experience period.

by sigzero 16y ago

barrkel 16y ago
The trouble is that "best experience" is a vague term. The best experience today may be different from the best experience tomorrow, which in turn may not causally lead to the best experience of all potential experiences 2 or 5 years later. Figuring out how to get the best experience a few years out is difficult; it involves some measure of creating the future, and some measure of predicting the future. It's too simplistic to argue H.264 as being the best for the user, hence it should be supported. Figuring out whether it is actually best for the user depends on a lot of variables, a lot of hard work, and some measure of work.
pyre 16y ago
I'll expand a bit on barrkel's comment: Back in the day when IE dominated Netscape Navigator/Communicator, IE was the best end-user experience. Flash-forward a few years and IE is languishing, with practically no new development happening on it. At this time (prior to Mozilla taking off), IE is still the best end-user experience available, but not the best end-user experience possible. It to took the Mozilla Suite and it's spin-off, Firefox, to bring a better user-experience to market. The same applies now. While h.264 might provide the best experience right now, it's (possibly) at the cost of the experience in the future. What happens in the future when the MPEG-LA decides to start changing/enforcing royalties? What growing pains will the industry have to endure to change formats away from h.264 if that becomes an issue? What if h.264 is so entrenched that they can't migrate away from it? Why not just standardize on something now that won't have those problems later? To fall back on the analogy, if IE hadn't pushed Netscape out of the market, what would the web ecosystem look like now?

4 ms·

As the end user...I only care about which one gives me the best experience period.

by sigzero 16y ago

As the end user...I only care about which one gives me the best experience period.

barrkel 16y ago
The trouble is that "best experience" is a vague term. The best experience today may be different from the best experience tomorrow, which in turn may not causally lead to the best experience of all potential experiences 2 or 5 years later. Figuring out how to get the best experience a few years out is difficult; it involves some measure of creating the future, and some measure of predicting the future. It's too simplistic to argue H.264 as being the best for the user, hence it should be supported. Figuring out whether it is actually best for the user depends on a lot of variables, a lot of hard work, and some measure of work.
pyre 16y ago
I'll expand a bit on barrkel's comment: Back in the day when IE dominated Netscape Navigator/Communicator, IE was the best end-user experience. Flash-forward a few years and IE is languishing, with practically no new development happening on it. At this time (prior to Mozilla taking off), IE is still the best end-user experience available, but not the best end-user experience possible. It to took the Mozilla Suite and it's spin-off, Firefox, to bring a better user-experience to market. The same applies now. While h.264 might provide the best experience right now, it's (possibly) at the cost of the experience in the future. What happens in the future when the MPEG-LA decides to start changing/enforcing royalties? What growing pains will the industry have to endure to change formats away from h.264 if that becomes an issue? What if h.264 is so entrenched that they can't migrate away from it? Why not just standardize on something now that won't have those problems later? To fall back on the analogy, if IE hadn't pushed Netscape out of the market, what would the web ecosystem look like now?