google is killing MPEG LA by droping h264:

[BlackStar]

This was an extremely one-sided and trollish article. A sad attempt at controversy and ad revenue that's does not fit in with the general quality of ars.

Additionally, standardization takes time. First, you create a reference implementation (we now have that). Then, independent implementations appear (ffmpeg now offers its own implementation, others will follow). Now, you have to work out the kinks, clarify whatever needs clarification, respin parts that need respinning - and after that, you can submit your spec to a standardization organism. If you are Microsoft, you can optionally opt for a "fast-track" process and buy off the opposition (see OpenXML).

WebM is barely one year old, *of course* it's not standardized yet. We are talking about a proposed codec (WebM) for a proposed standard (HTML5) that will not start being worked on before 2012.

Saying that WebM is not a standard yet either misses the point or is intentionally misleading.

[t.s.]

ATM, VP8 doesn't have hardware decoders that support it, so, without using a high-end CPU (for instance, if I play a WebM/VP8 full HD video (1080p) on Youtube, my core2duo CPU goes to above 50% (which is about 100% CPU in a single-threaded app) and videos stutter quite a lot) you're out of luck...

...For Now.
Read somewhere (sorry, can't give ya ta link. It's a long time ago, almost forgot about the news too) that google have a partnership with ARM to develop WebM decode-capable-processor (so, looks like they're working on it).

Hope it will bear fruit in not too distant future.

[t.s.]

That means that you support software patents.

I don't. Patents should not apply to algorithms, mathematics and formulas. Period.

+1. Only stupid support software patents [for algorithms, mathematics, formulas]. But, read everywhere. What ones sues other is related with THAT!

Hm.. Wonder why the inventor of pythagoras did'nt patent-ing his algorithm. Why the arabs didn't patent numerics. What a sort of idiot, no?

[t.s.]

All in all..
Good news!

[BlackStar]

Hardware WebM video decoder design released: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20237

[V!NCENT]

Yes! Oh yeah... This is going to hurt

[jeremyj]

in the end, I like this because I would rather have google calling the shots than microsoft, apple, etc.

google has given us a web browser that doesn't suck as much, and quite a few other tools that only moderately suck (more than e.g. microsoft can say), almost always for free and quite often open source. I trust them to make the right decision more than I trust the other players.

[evolution]

+1. Only stupid support software patents [for algorithms, mathematics, formulas]. But, read everywhere. What ones sues other is related with THAT!

Hm.. Wonder why the inventor of pythagoras did'nt patent-ing his algorithm. Why the arabs didn't patent numerics. What a sort of idiot, no?

Yeah! Nice... If someone disagrees with you, let's insult him...

Ok, nice to know there will be in the near future HW VP8 support... But there are still some obstacles if VP8 wants to outpace H264 in the consumers' market.

1- Content protection: Service and Content providers want something that guarantees their content is received and your receive it "protected". If Google can convince those companies their codec "protects" the contents the provide, there will be a huge bump of adoption of Google's VP8 codec.

2- Performance: ATM, VP8 is no better than H264 baseline in visual quality, and, in terms of performance is much slower than H264 (both encoding/decoding processes).

3- Hardware support: Now we'll have to wait some time until hardware manufacturers start to support VP8 along H264. And until then, we might have to wait some time...

4- For those who're insulting me saying I support patents: I also disagree with _CORPORATE_ patents, I think they stop technology progress in some ways... So, you're having a wrong opinion from me.

5- Finally, for the "trolls": What I've been trying to tell since the beginning from this thread is I don't support the way Google is dropping H264 support because, nowadays, H264 videos are one of the most widespread used codecs for Internet / HD videos, and if they're doing this in the near future isn't a very good decision, because I think programs should be used based on its funcionality, and for me, ATM, Chrome is the best browser I can use on Linux.
As a consequence, I think they should drop this support but in a later time...
Furthermore, I don't agree with this decision because I think this will allow third-party _PROPRIETARY_ plugins (such as flash) to live longer, whereas with HTML5, most plugins you use can be replaced in the future by simpler "html tags".

Cheers and please respect other's opinion...

[deanjo]

That means that you support software patents.

I don't. Patents should not apply to algorithms, mathematics and formulas. Period.

Licenses should not apply to algorithms, mathematics and formulas as well. Could you imagine if Isaac Newton had a license on his contributions?

[BlackStar]

2- Performance: ATM, VP8 is no better than H264 baseline in visual quality, and, in terms of performance is much slower than H264 (both encoding/decoding processes)

VP8 decoding on a single core CPU: 85fps @1080p. I really don't think performance is an issue. (Source: http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/10/...y-release.html)

Quality is a different matter but then again how many web videos have good quality? 1%? 2%? The rest are webcam trash that look the same no matter the settings.

BluRay and the like will keep using H.264 like before.