5 ms·

It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg -- hardware support seems a silly reason from Apple, who manufacture their own hardware, and the "patent la

by seldo 17y ago

It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg -- hardware support seems a silly reason from Apple, who manufacture their own hardware, and the "patent landscape" for the open-source Ogg seems even less likely. Do they still cling to a dream of Quicktime becoming the web standard, after the <video> tag kills Flash? The only people who should be pleased with this announcement are Adobe. Moving away from Flash will be an uphill struggle, and this makes it just a little bit harder.

tptacek 17y ago
I like the idea that anyone who has any hardware capability, or even significant hardware capability, can just whip up an Ogg chipset and roll it out to millions of installed devices. Hey, why doesn't Centrino 2 support Ogg? Intel must be clinging to some krazy dreams.
- seldo 17y ago
  The mass adoption of all elements of HTML 5 is 5 years off; far longer than Apple's hardware product cycle. If Apple wanted to start supporting Ogg, they could build it into their hardware in that timeframe. Also, it's not like their hardware can't support it right now; Ogg video in Firefox 3.5 runs just fine on my Mac.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Please write on the blackboard 100 times: "HTML5 has to be something that works well on mobile devices, not just on desktop/laptop machines." And right now that's going a long way toward killing Theora; mobile devices need a power-efficient hardware decoder to do video, and if they don't get one for Theora they're not going to run everybody's battery life into the ground by using software decoding.
    - vetinari 17y ago
      Well, HTML5 is not going to be adopted by tomorrow. The adoption will take longer than the mobile devices lifespan. It means, that if TI/Qualcomm/etc start developing Theora DSPs this year, they will be on the market and in the devices before HTML5 goes mainstream. Standardizing on Theora is pretty good incentive to have it hardware accelerated.
      - henrrrik 17y ago
        Well, Safari supports it today including on the iPhone as of verison 3.0. If YouTube rolls out HTML5 support in the next six months, that covers what, a third of all the video on the web (on YouTube itself and embedded on blogs)?
        vetinari 17y ago
        Safari supports HTML5 video element, but not HTML5 per se. It is not finished yet. Interestingly, when YouTube supported only Sorenson, Apple didn't care for that and went on ignoring YouTube. Why it is suddenly a problem?
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  It's somewhat amusing that it's Apple holding out hardware implementations as the key when for years they've included chipsets in their desktops and laptops with decoding ability that they've simply not used. This has now changed with Snow Leopard, but even then it's only one video card: ""While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops," Kim reports. "Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards," Kim reports. "Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks." http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21409/ http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21409/
tensafefrogs 17y ago
It is clear: They are worried about "Submarine patents" popping up in the theora codec and being sued once they implement it.
- vetinari 17y ago
  It is not clear at all: submarine patents popping up apply to H.264 too. Both codecs are on equal standing on this issue. However, remember that Apple is a MPEG LA member, so every time someone pays for H.264 license, a cut from the money goes to Apple.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Please see my comment a bit further up about parity of exposure.
    - vetinari 17y ago
      Are you programmer/IT guy? If yes, please be aware that the law does not work the way you think it works. For recent example why your theory of parity of exposure is not valid, see Microsoft vs. Alcatel-Lucent.
      - ubernostrum 17y ago
        "For recent example why your theory of parity of exposure is not valid, see Microsoft vs. Alcatel-Lucent." And what, pray tell, do you want me to take away from that? My point is simply this: big companies know they can't avoid the possibility of patent trolls. The next best thing, then, is ensuring that your competitors in a given market are at least as screwed as you are if someone starts slinging lawsuits. Having other people implement Theora first while they sit back and watch to see what happens gives Apple (and Nokia, which everybody still seems to forget) that position: if nobody sues immediately, they can choose to implement Theora and know they're no worse off than the competition. If somebody does sue immediately, they (Apple and Nokia) will just issue an "I told you so" and stay away from Theora. Similarly, right now if somebody starts suing over submarine claims on H.264, Apple's not really any worse off than some of the other players. This has nothing whatsoever to do with law or lawyers or courtrooms, and everything to do with managing risk.
ubernostrum 17y ago
"It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg" So, I don't necessarily agree with this reasoning, but I'd suspect it goes like this: The hardware point is quite valid; Apple doesn't manufacture all the hardware in, say, an iPhone (they buy lots of stuff off the shelf and assemble overseas), and would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder but also integrating it into a space- and power-constrained device. And they've invested too much in H.264 to just drop it, so they'd have to make both work, which is even tougher. The patent concerns, meanwhile, are probably less about minimizing exposure to possible patent claims and more about ensuring that Apple doesn't have significantly more exposure than any other major player. They have that situation right now with H.264: everybody's on a level playing field with respect to the known licensing, and if submarine claims pop up, Apple's not the only company vulnerable, so they wouldn't suddenly be at a huge disadvantage. With Theora that situation doesn't exist yet; nobody's yet taken the big plunge into wide-scale deployment of Theora in the market, and Apple (and others, including Nokia) are skittish about being the first to do so, since first to market may end up being first to get sued, and then nobody else will want to use Theora, leaving them all alone exposed to patent claims. I suspect that if somebody else steps up and does Theora in a big way first, Apple will feel more comfortable following, since then they'll once again be maintaining rough parity of exposure.
- trezor 17y ago
  would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder Not to mention H.264 was designed with hardware decoding in mind, while Ogg Theora was not. From reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yhi6/decoding_the_html_5_video_codec_debate_why/c0aum5a http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yhi6/decoding_... Theora is derived from VP3 and neither were designed with hardware implementations in mind. VP3 uses funky high precision unsigned multiplication because it was fast on a Pentium II MMX back in the day. Theora carries this over and it makes hardware implementation a pain in the arse and virtually unimplementable in some cases ... H.264 was specifically designed with hardware implementation in mind and is thus pure 16-bit mathematics, at least through to Main Profile. It would seem that for the embedded market, Theora is not going to happen anytime soon.

by seldo 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago

I like the idea that anyone who has any hardware capability, or even significant hardware capability, can just whip up an Ogg chipset and roll it out to millions of installed devices. Hey, why doesn't Centrino 2 support Ogg? Intel must be clinging to some krazy dreams.

seldo 17y ago
The mass adoption of all elements of HTML 5 is 5 years off; far longer than Apple's hardware product cycle. If Apple wanted to start supporting Ogg, they could build it into their hardware in that timeframe. Also, it's not like their hardware can't support it right now; Ogg video in Firefox 3.5 runs just fine on my Mac.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Please write on the blackboard 100 times: "HTML5 has to be something that works well on mobile devices, not just on desktop/laptop machines." And right now that's going a long way toward killing Theora; mobile devices need a power-efficient hardware decoder to do video, and if they don't get one for Theora they're not going to run everybody's battery life into the ground by using software decoding.
  - vetinari 17y ago
    Well, HTML5 is not going to be adopted by tomorrow. The adoption will take longer than the mobile devices lifespan. It means, that if TI/Qualcomm/etc start developing Theora DSPs this year, they will be on the market and in the devices before HTML5 goes mainstream. Standardizing on Theora is pretty good incentive to have it hardware accelerated.
    - henrrrik 17y ago
      Well, Safari supports it today including on the iPhone as of verison 3.0. If YouTube rolls out HTML5 support in the next six months, that covers what, a third of all the video on the web (on YouTube itself and embedded on blogs)?
      - vetinari 17y ago
        Safari supports HTML5 video element, but not HTML5 per se. It is not finished yet. Interestingly, when YouTube supported only Sorenson, Apple didn't care for that and went on ignoring YouTube. Why it is suddenly a problem?
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
It's somewhat amusing that it's Apple holding out hardware implementations as the key when for years they've included chipsets in their desktops and laptops with decoding ability that they've simply not used. This has now changed with Snow Leopard, but even then it's only one video card: ""While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops," Kim reports. "Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards," Kim reports. "Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks." http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21409/ http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21409/

tensafefrogs 17y ago

It is clear: They are worried about "Submarine patents" popping up in the theora codec and being sued once they implement it.

vetinari 17y ago
It is not clear at all: submarine patents popping up apply to H.264 too. Both codecs are on equal standing on this issue. However, remember that Apple is a MPEG LA member, so every time someone pays for H.264 license, a cut from the money goes to Apple.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Please see my comment a bit further up about parity of exposure.
  - vetinari 17y ago
    Are you programmer/IT guy? If yes, please be aware that the law does not work the way you think it works. For recent example why your theory of parity of exposure is not valid, see Microsoft vs. Alcatel-Lucent.
    - ubernostrum 17y ago
      "For recent example why your theory of parity of exposure is not valid, see Microsoft vs. Alcatel-Lucent." And what, pray tell, do you want me to take away from that? My point is simply this: big companies know they can't avoid the possibility of patent trolls. The next best thing, then, is ensuring that your competitors in a given market are at least as screwed as you are if someone starts slinging lawsuits. Having other people implement Theora first while they sit back and watch to see what happens gives Apple (and Nokia, which everybody still seems to forget) that position: if nobody sues immediately, they can choose to implement Theora and know they're no worse off than the competition. If somebody does sue immediately, they (Apple and Nokia) will just issue an "I told you so" and stay away from Theora. Similarly, right now if somebody starts suing over submarine claims on H.264, Apple's not really any worse off than some of the other players. This has nothing whatsoever to do with law or lawyers or courtrooms, and everything to do with managing risk.

ubernostrum 17y ago

"It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg" So, I don't necessarily agree with this reasoning, but I'd suspect it goes like this: The hardware point is quite valid; Apple doesn't manufacture all the hardware in, say, an iPhone (they buy lots of stuff off the shelf and assemble overseas), and would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder but also integrating it into a space- and power-constrained device. And they've invested too much in H.264 to just drop it, so they'd have to make both work, which is even tougher. The patent concerns, meanwhile, are probably less about minimizing exposure to possible patent claims and more about ensuring that Apple doesn't have significantly more exposure than any other major player. They have that situation right now with H.264: everybody's on a level playing field with respect to the known licensing, and if submarine claims pop up, Apple's not the only company vulnerable, so they wouldn't suddenly be at a huge disadvantage. With Theora that situation doesn't exist yet; nobody's yet taken the big plunge into wide-scale deployment of Theora in the market, and Apple (and others, including Nokia) are skittish about being the first to do so, since first to market may end up being first to get sued, and then nobody else will want to use Theora, leaving them all alone exposed to patent claims. I suspect that if somebody else steps up and does Theora in a big way first, Apple will feel more comfortable following, since then they'll once again be maintaining rough parity of exposure.

trezor 17y ago
would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder Not to mention H.264 was designed with hardware decoding in mind, while Ogg Theora was not. From reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yhi6/decoding_the_html_5_video_codec_debate_why/c0aum5a http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yhi6/decoding_... Theora is derived from VP3 and neither were designed with hardware implementations in mind. VP3 uses funky high precision unsigned multiplication because it was fast on a Pentium II MMX back in the day. Theora carries this over and it makes hardware implementation a pain in the arse and virtually unimplementable in some cases ... H.264 was specifically designed with hardware implementation in mind and is thus pure 16-bit mathematics, at least through to Main Profile. It would seem that for the embedded market, Theora is not going to happen anytime soon.