

Free Software Types are Banging the Theora Drum, Hopelessly - apphacker
http://blog.apphacker.com/2010/05/02/free-software-types-are-banging-the-theora-drum-hopelessly/

======
teilo
Umm... buggy H.264 in Linux? Come again? H.264 playback using Open Source
software is not buggy. Far from it. Whether VLC on Linux or MPC on Windows -
it works extremely well.

In-browser H.264, maybe, but that's has nothing to do with the quality of open
source H.264 decoding. Maybe a plugin problem, and likely a temporary one at
that.

I use open-source codecs to watch H.264 all the time. I have watched hundreds
of hours of it on Linux-driven devices without a problem. This article is
nothing but FUD itself.

And if you want to talk about the quality of H.264 encoding, I'll put x264 up
against any commercial product any day, period. It beats the hell out of
everything I have seen.

~~~
AngryParsley
H.264 playback on Linux is a nightmare. Libavcodec can only do single-threaded
decoding, which makes playing 1080p content practically impossible. Even my
3.2Ghz Core 2 Duo can't keep up in scenes full of motion or film grain. The
same files play fine in Quicktime on my 2Ghz Macbook.

In addition, many postprocessing options are inefficient and actually decrease
video quality. For example: the default settings in both VLC and XBMC cause
video to slowly get blockier and oversaturated until a new keyframe comes in.
Again, the same videos look fine when played in Quicktime, and I've seen this
issue across platforms.

Another problem I've had is that I'll often see a single row of green pixels
at the bottom of the screen. It's probably caused by some sort of off-by-one
error.

All of these sorts of annoyances accumulate to become infuriating. No
commercial product would be released in such a state.

~~~
aw3c2
I use mplayer with vdpau (nvidia gpu acceleration) on my Athlon II X2 240 and
it happily plays 1080p.

~~~
AngryParsley
Only certain newer graphics cards from Nvidia and S3 support VDPAU. If you
have Intel or ATI/AMD graphics, you're SOL.

Also, the feature isn't auto-detected in any player I've used. You have to
know that your card and player support VDPAU, and know how to enable it.

~~~
stevedotcom
Every nvidia card since the GeForce 8xxx series beginning supports vdpau (save
for a few exceptions), and even a few from the 7xxx series.

And if you don't have nvidia, sucks to be you for buying from a video card mfg
that doesn't make nice things for its users.

------
Raphael
So in other words, sit back and relax while we wait for VP8.

------
sandGorgon
I have a question - I am a linux user and am willing to pay a few dollars to
get a patent-encumbered, high quality decoder - if it allows me to watch high
def entertainment with low enough internet bandwidth expenditure.

Is it that a vast majority of Linux users are unwilling to _pay_ : for content
and software ?

If it is as I suspect, then it could easily sound a death knell for media
consumption on Linux. I wonder how much sooner would we have had Linux
hardware-assisted H.264 playback (ffmpeg, vlc), if there money to be made off
them.

H.264 is evil for content producers - for content consumers, if (and _only_
if) the quality of H.264 >>>>>>>>>> Theora, then I can see why we would have
to pay for it.

------
thewileyone
Isn't H.264 the core of Quicktime? Isn't it obvious that Jobs is just pissed
off that Quicktime lost out to Flash as a web video standard? I remember when
Flash was for interactive stuff and Quicktime was for anything video.

This is just a second wave of attack for Jobs cause the first one failed.

