Internet Explorer 9 and Ogg Theora

[Kintaro]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/30/internet_explorer_9_closed_video/

Apparently the Redmond Beast are refusing to support Ogg Theora. Before some of you go off on a tangent about Microsoft doing their usual thing, I believe Microsoft are as much a victim in this as the guys over at Ogg. H264 costs Microsoft money in licencing and Ogg Theora does not. Microsoft's old prime directive to adapt, expand, and extinguish is completely vanquished with H264 as Microsoft did not make it. Theora could be forked on the other hand.

This is a good example of the innovation stifling evils of software patents. As Ayn Rand said "All Government power is physical coercion," and that is exactly the nature of patent law. Contrary to the belief that it secures technological growth by securing investment, it simply puts producers in a ball and chain. No matter what a developers bottom line is (profit or fun) patents destroy both.

[piratePenguin]

MS are not "as much a victim" as the guys in Ogg. Xiph are having FUD* spread about them that will cost them their business. Microsoft is paying an extremely worthwhile fee to ship h264 support with all of their products (eventually).

The other victims are Mozilla and Opera, who ultimately cant afford to pay the fee for h264. (And I suppose all free operating systems too)

Software patents are dreadful (I wont speak about other types). When they came into existence they were about making innovators share the details of their inventions in the public domain (in return their invention would be protected for a period of time), but software patents (id like to add particularly apples, but thats only because those are the only ones ive looked at) you dont need to read the patent to learn a damn thing.


* and it appears this fud is being spread by apple and not only microsoft? this isnt a shock to me, but gives apple fanboys something to think about. If Ogg/Theora violates patents, FILE A LAWSUIT, this "oh, we think they violate patents" scaremongering is fucking disgusting. Btw, xiph make an active effort to ensure details do not violate MPEG/etc patents last time i check (just as MPEG ensures they patent every detail), of course youd expect apple and the rest to open their traps not even when the codec is released, but well after and during a war for the standard video codec of the web.

btw and offtopic, i think video codecs are a very interesting subject and since i study maths i intend to spend time studying video codecs during the summer. I'm an amateur on the topic, but i have some things I want to see about.

[Kintaro]

Apple pulled the same cunt moves on Palm over WebOS.

Adobe's FLV seems to be all that matters on the web, and Xvid is the only thing that matters in the area of piracy.

At the end of the day it is just a codec, I am sure someone will make a Theora hack for IE9.

I wonder how the guys at Opera deal with all this BS in the browser world anyway, though, I'd personally be really happy to pay for Opera.

[piratePenguin]

Apple pulled the same cunt moves on Palm over WebOS.

Adobe's FLV seems to be all that matters on the web, and Xvid is the only thing that matters in the area of piracy.

At the end of the day it is just a codec, I am sure someone will make a Theora hack for IE9.

I wonder how the guys at Opera deal with all this BS in the browser world anyway, though, I'd personally be really happy to pay for Opera.

"It is just a browser" is what normal people were saying when Netscape and IE were fighting to the death.

[worker201]

I read somewhere recently that h264 can actually be decoded by hardware, whereas ogg/theora has to be decoded by software.  On a desktop computer, that means fuck all.  But on a mobile platform, that's important.  Supposedly, mobile phone battery life doubles when all decoding is done on a chip, as opposed to an OS process that eats RAM.  I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for mobile technology to control the direction of the industry - I just wanted to point out that there might be other factors involved besides openness.

[piratePenguin]

Btw, xiph make an active effort to ensure details do not violate MPEG/etc patents last time i check (just as MPEG ensures they patent every detail)

This is indeed certainly true, and according to Google, they have been sucessful in creating a PATENT FREE CODEC. (~according to google~)

Please read: http://www.osnews.com/story/23135/Google_Puts_Weight_Behind_Theora_on_Mobile

[piratePenguin]

I read somewhere recently that h264 can actually be decoded by hardware, whereas ogg/theora has to be decoded by software.  On a desktop computer, that means fuck all.  But on a mobile platform, that's important.  Supposedly, mobile phone battery life doubles when all decoding is done on a chip, as opposed to an OS process that eats RAM.  I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for mobile technology to control the direction of the industry - I just wanted to point out that there might be other factors involved besides openness.

Mobile devices will certainly shape the direction of this decision. I don't know anybody else in college who uses a desktop computer like I'm currently using anymore. Everybody has laptops. And in the future everyone will use their phones for video at least some of the time. Maybe the majority of youtube video will be viewed on mobile devices in 5 years? And then you'll look back and laugh at this comment

Google currently uses h264 on its html5 youtube video site. It also has purchased a company (on2) that owns a video codec that competes with or beats h264, but nobody knows what they're gonna do with it. (maybe there's licensing issues with making it all open, I've no idea)

When google created their suggestion box site for youtube, the number 1 request was OPEN VIDEO, not just html5 video. I think ultimately this decision (for the web) can come down to Google -- and they will happily do the opposite to Microsoft, and probably win in my opinion. So I think it's really important that google bails the web out (its a shame to say that thats what I think we need). But their decision will ultimately be about business - and that includes maintaining a good image. I don't think pushing h264 out to everyone is the best way to maintain that - and I think that option scares them a little bit too. So supporting theora, I hope this is an indication of whats to come.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Don't most modern motherboards have an on-board codec anyway?

I know I've seen them on many motherboards before.

If the OS uses the hardware codec on the motherboard then there shouldn't be any patent issues as the licence has been paid for when you buy the hardware, not the OS.

[Kintaro]

Don't most modern motherboards have an on-board codec anyway?

I know I've seen them on many motherboards before.

If the OS uses the hardware codec on the motherboard then there shouldn't be any patent issues as the licence has been paid for when you buy the hardware, not the OS.

I think you mean the GPU for the onboard graphics that poor people use. The GPU has instructions and I assume firmware for a lot of codecs, but the instructions are there for just about anything. I don't know what kind of DRM ATI/nVidia use or if any Joe can write code for the GPUs though. I've heard the GPU can be used as a badass cryptoprocessor among things.

Web Developers don't run IE9 anyway, they all circlejerk around Firefox or wisely run Opera. Without Ballmer's precious developers I think Microsoft will be at the whims of Firefox/Opera users for years to come in terms of standards specification.

[Lead Head]

Both ATI and nVidia have development kits to write "GPGPU" compatible code. Many modern codecs and video players support GPU acceleration. Really you can build a hardware accelerator for just about anything, you just need the code to do it. With huge formats like H.264, the manpower/want is there to write said code, not so much with Ogg Theora.

Its quite a piss off that Google/Youtube is bent on using H.264 for their HTML5 video players. I'm guessing this is a big part of MS's decision to support H.264. It doesn't appear that Firefox or any other open source browser will be shipping with H.264 codecs anytime soon.

[piratePenguin]

Both ATI and nVidia have development kits to write "GPGPU" compatible code. Many modern codecs and video players support GPU acceleration. Really you can build a hardware accelerator for just about anything, you just need the code to do it. With huge formats like H.264, the manpower/want is there to write said code, not so much with Ogg Theora.

Its quite a piss off that Google/Youtube is bent on using H.264 for their HTML5 video players. I'm guessing this is a big part of MS's decision to support H.264. It doesn't appear that Firefox or any other open source browser will be shipping with H.264 codecs anytime soon.

We really dont know what google/youtube will do yet. They are currently using h264, dont think that cant change before they make html5 the default.