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The exact H.264 profile supported by different devices varies greatly -- it is not an issue with Android the OS but with the range of different devices in the A

The exact H.264 profile supported by different devices varies greatly -- it is not an issue with Android the OS but with the range of different devices in the Android ecosystem. With only a few iOS devices, you can test them all with your encoded media (in fact most media encoders have presets for iOS devices) and offer encodings that support all devices. This simply isn't possible with Android. Either you lower the quality (because your video must all be H.264 Baseline 3 for compatibility) or you'll simply get pockets of oddball devices that can't play media (because they don't support the entire set of Main or High profile video features). Additionally, the magazine is probably using HTTP Live Streaming to handle media (the ideal protocol for streaming to iOS devices). While Android technically supports this in Android 3 and 4, there are differences in supported features. Specifically, most of the features in version 3 of HTTP Live Streaming (which came out in iOS 5) -- including multiple audio tracks, closed captions, frame based indexes and more -- are not supported in Android.

sspiff 14y ago
You make an interesting point. Would it not be possible though, to host multiple encoding profiles on a server somewhere, and have the device download the best match for its screen and decoding capabilities?
- josephlord 14y ago
  I'm sure it is possible. I'm not sure it is worthwhile/profitable to manage, support and test such a set up.
  - noptic 14y ago
    As far as I can renember this is a core feature of HTML5 video support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
Presumably then they still want to add a purchasing scheme on to the audio/video, I'm guessing that's already embedded in Apple's offering. E.g. look at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id481037450?mt=8&src=af&affId=2064962 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id481037450?mt=8&src=af&..., they have music tracks that you can play (see example pages on horizontal scroll section); presumably you can click-through and buy them somehow?

sspiff 14y ago

You make an interesting point. Would it not be possible though, to host multiple encoding profiles on a server somewhere, and have the device download the best match for its screen and decoding capabilities?

josephlord 14y ago
I'm sure it is possible. I'm not sure it is worthwhile/profitable to manage, support and test such a set up.
- noptic 14y ago
  As far as I can renember this is a core feature of HTML5 video support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Multiple_sources

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

Presumably then they still want to add a purchasing scheme on to the audio/video, I'm guessing that's already embedded in Apple's offering. E.g. look at https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id481037450?mt=8&src=af&affId=2064962 https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id481037450?mt=8&src=af&..., they have music tracks that you can play (see example pages on horizontal scroll section); presumably you can click-through and buy them somehow?