blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
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  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</div>
  24       <div class="date">12th January 2011</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>Today I discovered
  26 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
  27 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
  28 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
  29 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
  30 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
  31 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
  32 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
  33 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
  34 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
  35 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
  36 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
  37 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
  38 on the Google announcement is available from
  39 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
  40 A good read. :)</p>
  41
  42 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
  43 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
  44 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
  45 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
  46 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
  47 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
  48 browsers support H.264, and others support
  49 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
  50 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
  51 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
  52 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
  53 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
  54 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
  55 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
  56 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
  57
  58 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
  59 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
  60 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
  61 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
  62 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
  63 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
  64 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
  65
  66 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
  67 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
  68 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
  69 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
  70 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
  71 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
  72 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
  73
  74 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
  75 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
  76 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
  77 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
  78 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
  79 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
  80 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
  81
  82 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
  83 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
  84 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
  85 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
  86 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
  87 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
  88 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
  89 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
  90 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
  91 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
  92 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
  93 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
  94 I guess time will tell.</p>
  95
  96 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
  97 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
  98 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
  99 </div>
 100
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