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> Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube HTML5 > Implemented Encrypted Media Extensi

by Touche 11y ago

> Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube HTML5 > Implemented Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) API to support encrypted HTML5 video/audio playback (Windows Vista or later only) HTML5 > Automatically download Adobe Primetime Content Decryption Module (CDM) for DRM playback through EME (Windows Vista or later only) :( Notice which OSes are left off the list. I don't blame Mozilla as they were just following inevitability but it's a sad day for the web as there's now a lot of content that, by design of W3C, only works on certain OSes. Of course the EME champions promised us that this wouldn't happen and they are apparently silent for the moment.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube HTML5 Media Source Extensions, while compatible with Encrypted Media Extensions, the DRM system, are not DRM. They let JavaScript manipulate the byte streams of the video data before it goes to the video codec, so you can handle streaming and such from JS.
acdha 11y ago
What video could you watch before that you cannot watch now? I also wish we lived in a world which didn't need EME but it's not like the status quo was video which played for everyone. It just meant that everyone had to download monthly updates to avoid security problems with the massive plugin they used to play video and Linux, etc. users were largely still screwed.
- bad_user 11y ago
  There's a big difference - before these moves, DRM delivery of video had to be done using shitty nonstandard plugins or native apps, right? Whenever this happens, usability suffers as well. And we had a real opportunity here to give users an open and non-broken standard as an alternative, on top of which alternative platforms for content delivery could be built, alternatives that could have won simply because of the ubiquitousness of the standard browser. Besides, DRM is technically and fundamentally broken. All my respect for W3C has gone down the window.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. Yes, we used to use plug-ins for video. This worked reasonably well for quite a long time. I do think calling those plug-ins non-standard is a bit of a joke, given that Flash had 90+% market penetration for years and ran acceptably well almost everywhere, putting it far ahead of any browser in terms of portability and compatibility. By any reasonable definition, it was the de facto standard for on-line video streaming. Then Apple decided not to follow that standard and broke the Web for their users. For those users, a lot of major sites still "don't work properly" today because of Apple's arrogance. Browser makers are playing along anyway, so now we have an HTML5 video ecosystem where the closest thing to a universally supported video format is patent-encumbered anyway. It is still supported on fewer systems than video using Flash players used to be. And instead of security flaws with your "non-standard" plug-ins like Flash, you're inevitably going to see security flaws with whatever media extensions you install instead (unless you think low-level, natively executed code written in error-prone programming languages and provided by the same kinds of organisations who used to provide the plug-ins is somehow magically going to be secure this time around, in which case I know a Nigerian prince who has a great deal to offer you). This isn't progress. In what is becoming a serious and recurring problem with the modern web, issues other than what gives the best experience to users and makes things easiest for content providers to provide content are dominating the discussions. Many of the proposals are advocated by other parties with vested interests. And in the end, the result is that less stuff works, and stuff works less well, than the "legacy", "insecure" standards that have actually done the required job pretty well for a decade or two.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      > I do think calling those plug-ins non-standard is a bit of a joke, given that Flash had 90+% market penetration for years Flash was also proprietary. It's closed-source, patent-encumbered, and has a single implementation. It's completely under the control of Adobe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard > For those users, a lot of major sites still "don't work properly" today because of Apple's arrogance. As Apple explained countless times, it is not because of "arrogance" that they did not support Flash. Adobe weren't able to supply them with a working mobile Flash runtime, and Flash's resource use was a big problem (memory, CPU, battery life), so it couldn't run on mobile devices. Recall that the first iPhones had severely limited RAM (128MB!) and CPUs, and even when, years later, Android devices with Flash bundled were released, they couldn't run it terribly well. Flash was also a massive security and stability headache: as Apple loved to point out, it was the single largest source of application crashes on OS X.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Honestly, I'd rather developers move their DRM-encumbered video services to native apps and leave the web alone.
portaljacker 11y ago
Does EME being implemented finally mean that I can uninstall Silverlight for watching Netflix in Firefox in the near future?
- Touche 11y ago
  That depends on which OS you use.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  Don't do it. I've been using the non-silverlight Netflix in Safari and it's such a nightmare I switched back. Constantly fails to load content.
  - Alphasite_ 11y ago
    Really? I had some issues with the very first release of HTML5 Netflix, but it is pretty solid now.
    - k-mcgrady 11y ago
      Might need to look at it again. I used it throughout the last OS X beta and then it still had issues in the first release so I moved away from it.
  - selectodude 11y ago
    I wonder why you have issues and I don't. The only new thing I've noticed with Netflix on HTML5 is my battery life has near-doubled.
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    Comparing HTML5 Netflix playback using Safari on OS X vs Firefox on Windows is not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
  - portaljacker 11y ago
    Well that`s annoying. At least the newer version of the Silverlight player supports HD, didn't appear to before. That was my main reason for wanting the HTML5 version.
mwfunk 11y ago
I'm not sure how this is any different from following the ongoing development of any other feature that requires platform-specific code to be written (WebGL, etc.). You will periodically see updates that only pertain to one platform or another, especially during bringup. No conspiracy there.
- wmf 11y ago
  Mozilla can implement/port WebGL for whatever platforms they want, but they can't implement Adobe Primetime DRM; they have to take whatever Adobe gives them.
javaun 11y ago
Hey Touche, I work on Firefox at Mozilla. We launched EME on Win32 (Vista+) first because that is by far the biggest share of Fx users. We will keep rolling out new platforms, the work will be long and hard. Streaming providers want to move off of Silverlight and Flash but will still support them for the foreseeable future, so content is still available.
- yarrel 11y ago
  You should be ashamed of doing the work of adding EME to Firefox. Please don't add it to other platforms. Remove it from Windows. If the work will be long and hard there are better uses of your time than working to ensure that "streaming providers" can oppose Mozilla's vision of an open web.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    Don't criticize Mozilla. The users have spoken and the vast majority don't care about DRM on streaming media. They just want to watch YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, etc in their browser and have it work. Google, Apple et al put their full weight behind DRM and patent-encumbered formats, so Mozilla has to go along with it to stay relevant. If you don't want EME on principle, an alternate version of Firefox without EME is available.
    - contingencies 11y ago
      The users have spoken and the vast majority don't care about DRM on streaming media. {{citation-needed}} They just want to watch YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, etc in their browser and have it work. YouTube works fine now. Netflix is a temporary aberration most of the world has never heard of or used. It's not the browser's job to support broken, predatory businesses. We spent 15+ years waiting and just achieved flashless and open video... let's use it. Google, Apple et al put their full weight behind DRM and patent-encumbered formats, so Mozilla has to go along with it to stay relevant. {{citation-needed}} Edit (out of posts): Yes, pay per view is a broken model. You are correct that Mozilla sticking to its guns risks a reduced user base. However, Mozilla blindly following other browser vendors removes its fundamental value and USP. The reality is that the internet wants not just 'open', but also meaningful choice. Many of us believe that Mozilla has, in this case, missed the boat.
venomsnake 11y ago
Well ... I have found that thepiratebay works flawlessly to deliver videos on any platform. It is sad that we are moving backwards. Right now I WANT to give netflix money for Daredevil ... and there is no legal way for me to do so ...
- coldpie 11y ago
  Hmmm? What OS do you run? Netflix works great on the Linux version of Google Chrome. Yes, you have to use proprietary software, but it does work.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    It is what region I live.
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    Proprietary software and live in a select group of countries and pay a fee that isn't cheap for everyone.
    - CHY872 11y ago
      Countries yes. Proprietary software, probably not a good argument. For example, I use Firefox for my web browsing, and Safari for Netflix - Safari uses EME so it's a much smoother experience. Fee that isn't cheap for everyone, I also doubt. Where I live, Netflix costs like £6.99. That is legitimately cheap for everyone. In Britain, you pay less for Netflix than the cost of a TV license.
      - hobarrera 11y ago
        You live in one of the countries with the strongest economies in the world. That something is "cheap" for you doesn't mean it's cheap for everyone else. £6.99 is small change to you, but it's about about four meals for me. It's also more than what I have in my wallet/bank account near at this very moment. And there's places where economies are way weaker and my own. Heck, I know people who earn less than that per day.

by Touche 11y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

> Mac OS X: Implemented a subset of the Media Source Extensions (MSE) API to allow native HTML5 playback on YouTube HTML5 Media Source Extensions, while compatible with Encrypted Media Extensions, the DRM system, are not DRM. They let JavaScript manipulate the byte streams of the video data before it goes to the video codec, so you can handle streaming and such from JS.

acdha 11y ago

What video could you watch before that you cannot watch now? I also wish we lived in a world which didn't need EME but it's not like the status quo was video which played for everyone. It just meant that everyone had to download monthly updates to avoid security problems with the massive plugin they used to play video and Linux, etc. users were largely still screwed.

bad_user 11y ago
There's a big difference - before these moves, DRM delivery of video had to be done using shitty nonstandard plugins or native apps, right? Whenever this happens, usability suffers as well. And we had a real opportunity here to give users an open and non-broken standard as an alternative, on top of which alternative platforms for content delivery could be built, alternatives that could have won simply because of the ubiquitousness of the standard browser. Besides, DRM is technically and fundamentally broken. All my respect for W3C has gone down the window.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  I understand your frustration, but I think you're complaining that you didn't get an option that was never realistically on the table in the first place. Your respect for the W3C matters a lot less to them than millions of people being able to watch content produced by a billion dollar industry, which much of that industry simply isn't willing to make available without DRM-style safeguards at the present time. Yes, we used to use plug-ins for video. This worked reasonably well for quite a long time. I do think calling those plug-ins non-standard is a bit of a joke, given that Flash had 90+% market penetration for years and ran acceptably well almost everywhere, putting it far ahead of any browser in terms of portability and compatibility. By any reasonable definition, it was the de facto standard for on-line video streaming. Then Apple decided not to follow that standard and broke the Web for their users. For those users, a lot of major sites still "don't work properly" today because of Apple's arrogance. Browser makers are playing along anyway, so now we have an HTML5 video ecosystem where the closest thing to a universally supported video format is patent-encumbered anyway. It is still supported on fewer systems than video using Flash players used to be. And instead of security flaws with your "non-standard" plug-ins like Flash, you're inevitably going to see security flaws with whatever media extensions you install instead (unless you think low-level, natively executed code written in error-prone programming languages and provided by the same kinds of organisations who used to provide the plug-ins is somehow magically going to be secure this time around, in which case I know a Nigerian prince who has a great deal to offer you). This isn't progress. In what is becoming a serious and recurring problem with the modern web, issues other than what gives the best experience to users and makes things easiest for content providers to provide content are dominating the discussions. Many of the proposals are advocated by other parties with vested interests. And in the end, the result is that less stuff works, and stuff works less well, than the "legacy", "insecure" standards that have actually done the required job pretty well for a decade or two.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > I do think calling those plug-ins non-standard is a bit of a joke, given that Flash had 90+% market penetration for years Flash was also proprietary. It's closed-source, patent-encumbered, and has a single implementation. It's completely under the control of Adobe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard > For those users, a lot of major sites still "don't work properly" today because of Apple's arrogance. As Apple explained countless times, it is not because of "arrogance" that they did not support Flash. Adobe weren't able to supply them with a working mobile Flash runtime, and Flash's resource use was a big problem (memory, CPU, battery life), so it couldn't run on mobile devices. Recall that the first iPhones had severely limited RAM (128MB!) and CPUs, and even when, years later, Android devices with Flash bundled were released, they couldn't run it terribly well. Flash was also a massive security and stability headache: as Apple loved to point out, it was the single largest source of application crashes on OS X.
amyjess 11y ago
Honestly, I'd rather developers move their DRM-encumbered video services to native apps and leave the web alone.

portaljacker 11y ago

Does EME being implemented finally mean that I can uninstall Silverlight for watching Netflix in Firefox in the near future?

Touche 11y ago
That depends on which OS you use.
k-mcgrady 11y ago
Don't do it. I've been using the non-silverlight Netflix in Safari and it's such a nightmare I switched back. Constantly fails to load content.
- Alphasite_ 11y ago
  Really? I had some issues with the very first release of HTML5 Netflix, but it is pretty solid now.
  - k-mcgrady 11y ago
    Might need to look at it again. I used it throughout the last OS X beta and then it still had issues in the first release so I moved away from it.
- selectodude 11y ago
  I wonder why you have issues and I don't. The only new thing I've noticed with Netflix on HTML5 is my battery life has near-doubled.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Comparing HTML5 Netflix playback using Safari on OS X vs Firefox on Windows is not really an apples-to-apples comparison.
- portaljacker 11y ago
  Well that`s annoying. At least the newer version of the Silverlight player supports HD, didn't appear to before. That was my main reason for wanting the HTML5 version.

mwfunk 11y ago

I'm not sure how this is any different from following the ongoing development of any other feature that requires platform-specific code to be written (WebGL, etc.). You will periodically see updates that only pertain to one platform or another, especially during bringup. No conspiracy there.

wmf 11y ago
Mozilla can implement/port WebGL for whatever platforms they want, but they can't implement Adobe Primetime DRM; they have to take whatever Adobe gives them.

javaun 11y ago

Hey Touche, I work on Firefox at Mozilla. We launched EME on Win32 (Vista+) first because that is by far the biggest share of Fx users. We will keep rolling out new platforms, the work will be long and hard. Streaming providers want to move off of Silverlight and Flash but will still support them for the foreseeable future, so content is still available.

yarrel 11y ago
You should be ashamed of doing the work of adding EME to Firefox. Please don't add it to other platforms. Remove it from Windows. If the work will be long and hard there are better uses of your time than working to ensure that "streaming providers" can oppose Mozilla's vision of an open web.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Don't criticize Mozilla. The users have spoken and the vast majority don't care about DRM on streaming media. They just want to watch YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, etc in their browser and have it work. Google, Apple et al put their full weight behind DRM and patent-encumbered formats, so Mozilla has to go along with it to stay relevant. If you don't want EME on principle, an alternate version of Firefox without EME is available.
  - contingencies 11y ago
    The users have spoken and the vast majority don't care about DRM on streaming media. {{citation-needed}} They just want to watch YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, etc in their browser and have it work. YouTube works fine now. Netflix is a temporary aberration most of the world has never heard of or used. It's not the browser's job to support broken, predatory businesses. We spent 15+ years waiting and just achieved flashless and open video... let's use it. Google, Apple et al put their full weight behind DRM and patent-encumbered formats, so Mozilla has to go along with it to stay relevant. {{citation-needed}} Edit (out of posts): Yes, pay per view is a broken model. You are correct that Mozilla sticking to its guns risks a reduced user base. However, Mozilla blindly following other browser vendors removes its fundamental value and USP. The reality is that the internet wants not just 'open', but also meaningful choice. Many of us believe that Mozilla has, in this case, missed the boat.

venomsnake 11y ago

Well ... I have found that thepiratebay works flawlessly to deliver videos on any platform. It is sad that we are moving backwards. Right now I WANT to give netflix money for Daredevil ... and there is no legal way for me to do so ...

coldpie 11y ago
Hmmm? What OS do you run? Netflix works great on the Linux version of Google Chrome. Yes, you have to use proprietary software, but it does work.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  It is what region I live.
- hobarrera 11y ago
  Proprietary software and live in a select group of countries and pay a fee that isn't cheap for everyone.
  - CHY872 11y ago
    Countries yes. Proprietary software, probably not a good argument. For example, I use Firefox for my web browsing, and Safari for Netflix - Safari uses EME so it's a much smoother experience. Fee that isn't cheap for everyone, I also doubt. Where I live, Netflix costs like £6.99. That is legitimately cheap for everyone. In Britain, you pay less for Netflix than the cost of a TV license.
    - hobarrera 11y ago
      You live in one of the countries with the strongest economies in the world. That something is "cheap" for you doesn't mean it's cheap for everyone else. £6.99 is small change to you, but it's about about four meals for me. It's also more than what I have in my wallet/bank account near at this very moment. And there's places where economies are way weaker and my own. Heck, I know people who earn less than that per day.