

Why Mozilla will support H.264 on OS that comes with it - lillycat
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/03/video-mobile-and-the-open-web/

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antonyme
H.264 is arguably more open than WebM. It has been developed by standards
committees over the course of many years, is published and backed by ITU, ISO,
IEC and MPEG. A massive number of devices support it, there are loads of
independent implementations, it is well documented and understood. It has been
blessed as the standard codec in many media formats (BluRay, HD DVD) and for
broadcast (ATB, DVB, etc) and is one of the most common video formats on the
web today.

WebM was originally a proprietary codec called VP8, developed by a single
vendor (On2 Technologies) with a single implementation and no real
specification. It was purchased by Google, and an ersatz specification was
extracted from the implementation.

I admire Google for what they are trying to achieve. But given both Windows
and Mac ship with H.264 decoding support, and it is fast becoming the de facto
format for mobile, the decision seems to be a no brainer.

~~~
mcpherrinm
I don't buy this argument at all.

If I have to pay royalty fees to ship an h.264 decoder, that's not open. If I
have to pay royalty fees for my startup to distribute videos in h.264, that's
not open.

Standardized doesn't mean "open".

[Edit: I think several people in this thread disagree what Open means. Since
this is the context of a Mozilla story, I think it is fair to use "Open" in
the sense of "Open Source".]

~~~
riobard
Open != free. H.264 is an open standard, in that the specification is open,
and you can implement your own encoder/decoder as you wish. H.264 is not a
free standard is due to the fact that you cannot implement anything useful
without using some patented technologies.

WebM is free. Good luck implementing your own encoder/decoder.

~~~
wmf
People tend to define open however it benefits them. It's not really worth
feeding the trolls.

~~~
koeselitz
Trolls - patent trolls - are sort of the central concern here, aren't they?

~~~
wmf
No, the companies that designed H.264 aren't really trolls. They actually do
R&D and sell real products; patent royalties are relatively minor sources of
revenue.

~~~
FrankBooth
The CEO of MPEG LA is also the CEO of a patent troll company called
MobileMedia.

~~~
masklinn
MPEG LA had no hand in designing h.264, it's solely a patent pool manager.

------
MatthewPhillips
Money quote:

> Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won’t sugar-coat this pill. But we
> must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives.

Mozilla fought the good fight, and lost. Instead of standing on a street
corner with a bullhorn, Mozilla is going to move on to fight the next battle.
Those would be WebRTC and Google/Netflix's Web DRM initiative.

~~~
tomjen3
What the hell is wrong with real time capabilities (I won't comment on open
source DRM, except to say it would make an okay April first joke)? The web
needs them, if it is to become the future we always wanted.

~~~
wmf
WebRTC is good; the question is whether it should use VP8 or H.264. Apple will
argue for H.264 while Mozilla will argue for VP8. Since WebRTC has not been
deployed yet there is no status quo to create path dependence.

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fpgeek
To put it more simply, what is the greater threat to the open web: platform-
dependent mobile apps or patent-encumbered video codecs?

~~~
lillycat
Without doubt platform-dependent mobile apps: by nature patents expire.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I agree in general, but note that those pushing patented codecs aren't idiots
and have an upgrade treadmill ready for users where at each decision point
it'll make sense to upgrade to a newer codec with new patents.

Having said that, the silliness of patented codecs seems to have been
recognized for lower bitrate use cases (image, speech, audio) so I guess it's
only a matter of time for video.

I think a Googly approach where the encoder and decoders are assumed to be
software like anything else in Chrome and updated every 6 weeks would be
interesting to see.

~~~
bad_user
Even though there are better alternatives to MP3 from both a technical and
legal perspective, and even though Apple has been pushing for AAC within
iTunes, nothing is close to replacing MP3 as the defacto standard for
distributing audio files.

There are multiple reasons for this, like the huge cost of re-encoding
everything that was once encoded in MP3, the broad hardware and software
support or the fact that MP3 is good enough for most purposes.

Broadband plays a role here as I'd bet that if it weren't so prevalent today,
then people would actually want formats that sound better at lower bitrates.
As it is, Amazon doesn't have a problem in selling songs encoded at 256 kbps,
although you won't hear a difference when comparing that to an 128 kbps
encoded AAC file from iTunes.

An upgrade scheme only works if files encoded with the newer codecs don't have
a problem being played on older software/hardware, because here's the thing
... H.264 is already good enough as far as video codecs go, just as MP3. And
this is doable, but the newer patents will most likely touch the encoders, not
decoders and the newer patents themselves will get more fragile over time, as
you can't really innovate on top of the same technique forever.

All in all I agree with the general sentiment ... proprietary platforms are
more dangerous than patents and native apps are more dangerous to the future
of the Internet than proprietary codecs.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Just as a counterpoint that illustrates the patent upgrade treadmill, you say
that nothing has come close to displacing MP3 for distributing audio files,
yet if you're distributing that audio as the soundtrack for a video then MP3
has been quite firmly displaced by AAC due to bundling by the MPEG group (even
though pirates held out with MPEG-4/DivX & mp3 for years).

You could even argue that the fact that it always comes with such (relatively)
large size video files makes the improvements of AAC over MP3 even less
relevant, but still the "standard" has moved on and everyone needs to keep up.
I also believe that 3G phones needed to support AAC but I could be just making
that up.

I've seen one "mp3 player" that dropped AAC support, but I can't see that
happening for any device that also wants video. The direct result will be
paying separate royalties on two mostly overlapping audio formats.

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cpeterso
Any guesses on the minimum number of (known!) patents that must be violated to
implement an H.264 decoder? I assume the answer must be greater than zero,
otherwise someone would have written an clever/convoluted H.264 decoder that
sidesteps known patent issues.

~~~
FrankBooth
The AVC/H.264 patent pool contains over a thousand "essential" patents. So, at
a guess, at least hundreds.

------
cageface
Mozilla's browser usage statistics show mobile devices at almost 2x desktop
browser usage next year yet stats available here show mobile as about 10% of
the market:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#His...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Historical_usage_share)

Which of these is right?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The Mozilla numbers show mobile _devices_ will outnumber desktop _devices_.
The Wikipedia numbers show web usage. People surf more on desktop machines,
and don't (need to) upgrade them as much so both figures are correct.

The real issue for Mozilla is that you can get great benefits (shared history,
passwords etc.) if you use the same browser on both platforms and sync them.
Luckily Apple and Microsoft's lock-in approach seems to be holding them back
here, but I'd imagine Android Chrome will be a big driver for Desktop Chrome
(and possibly vice versa).

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bsimpson
Didn't H.264 become free forever on the Web due to fear of competition from
WebM? Doesn't sound like a total loss.

~~~
wmf
Encoders and decoders have to pay royalties. But MPEG-LA says they're not
going to charge _more_ (legally questionable due to exhaustion) fees beyond
that.

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ars
I hope they also support ffmpeg libraries on linux to do the same thing.
(libavcodec and libavformat)

It would be really nice to have VDPAU video playback in the browser!

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silon3
So, will there be a European/free-world build for Linux/XP Firefox?

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Porter_423
At the end of 2010 I think the war of H.264 was reignited and I am surprise
that this time by Google.But still H.264 has some big advantages such as such
as it supports efficient hardware acceleration and its also an efficient
decoder of the browser.

