Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

blog.chromium.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 358 posts

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#321

Post by joubert »

jarek wrote: post #128
rradu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is fully behind HTML5 - http://www.apple.com/html5/

Yes, in spirit too: "This demo was designed with the latest web standards supported by Safari. If you’d like to experience this demo, simply download Safari. It’s free for Mac and PC, and it only takes a few minutes." Come see web standards! Using a specific browser.

Hum, because they're showing the latest HTML features that Safari supports? Not all browsers support the same range of features for a particular HTML standard.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#322

Post by CaptainZapp »

ubernostrum wrote: post #309
CaptainZapp wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Mozilla's already gone down the road of hypocrisy ("H264 bad! Plugins insecure! Keep shipping Flash!") Sigh! When did the Mozilla ever claim that they do not ship H.264 because it's insecure? They stated, as far as I recall, that they do not wish to support a patent crippled technology in their browser. A decision a lot of the more technically inclined users, who remember the GIF fiasko fully support. In additi…

Sigh! When did the Mozilla ever claim that they do not ship H.264 because it's insecure? Mike Shaver and Robert O'Callahan both -- during the early attempt to frantically spin this as more than just an ideological PR stunt -- pointed to security as a reason why they didn't feel comfortable delegating to other software. See the following posts: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec... http://web…

Well, I still call bullshit. Especially if this is the best you can come up with. Let's see:

http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec...

We have exactly two references to "security" :

  And I want that not only altruistically, but also because I want the crazy awesome video (animation, peer-to-peer, *security*, etc.) ideas that will come from having more people, with more perspectives, fully participating in the internet.
and

  (about 60% of our users are on Windows XP, which provides no H.264 codec), *to security* (exposure of arbitrary codecs to hostile content), and to user experience
None of them even slightly imply that the Mozilla team thinks H.264 is insecure.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_fr...

This is an FAQ or rant if you will, which goes on and on about why Mozilla does not want to implement H.264. Oh yes, not one single word about security

This one:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh...

indeed discusses security. It is however not geared towards H.264, but towards Microsoft's DirectShow. Using this article as a reference regarding Mozilla's stand on security on H.264 is at best a stretch and at worst intellectually dishonest.

  I'm calling "do your homework, lest you look like a badly-informed fanboy".
I never thought of myself as a fanboy, but be my guest to dive into ad-hominem, when you're out of arguments.

In addition. I'm rather an uninformed fanboy then an intellectually dishonest fanboy, which surprises me looking at your Kharma.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#323

Post by joakin »

What I get from here:

They have a codec that performs like this other one, but open for everybody to use without paying royalties. They have an agreement with most browsers to support this codec. None of the other browsers want to pay royalties for these codecs.

Well... the plan is clear

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#324

Post by jarek »

joubert wrote: post #321
jarek wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in spirit too: "This demo was designed with the latest web standards supported by Safari. If you’d like to experience this demo, simply download Safari. It’s free for Mac and PC, and it only takes a few minutes." Come see web standards! Using a specific browser.

Hum, because they're showing the latest HTML features that Safari supports? Not all browsers support the same range of features for a particular HTML standard.

Any organization which denies access to its HTML5 pages to browsers that support them is not fully behind the spirit of HTML. The reason is clear and understandable — marketing their browser — but so are the implications.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#325

Post by DannoHung »

bad_user wrote: post #306
DannoHung wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a proprietary video codec is significantly less open-threatening than a proprietary runtime. For one thing, the codec will eventually lose its patent protections. The runtime will continue to evolve at the platform owner's discretion. Regardless of how you feel about h.264 in general though, the decision to not support h.264 video in the browser through the video tag means that Flash is going to be sticking a…

Data outlives code. Right now as a software developer you have the option of not using Flash. Depending on your constraints, that may be a difficult choice to make, but it's a choice nonetheless: HTML5 is getting more popular, the JVM was always capable and popular enough for many scenarios, and there's also Silverlight. But choosing another codec for your multiple TB (and growing) of video you want to serve on the w…

> relevant as GIF is today.

What, you mean only useful for web comedy and image boards?

> And I'm pretty sure you don't know how software patents work. Companies apply for the same patents with different wording all the time. And there will also come a time when H.264 will not be enough, with MPEGLA in their infinite resourcefulness offering an easy upgrade to the next version under "reasonable" terms.

I really don't understand what your first part is getting at. MPEGLA will re-patent h.264 technologies under similar patents? As for the second part: Well, that gives Google a number of years to develop a codec that's actually really good and has hardware vendor support and is still free and all that. Just because you have multiple TB of video doesn't mean that different videos can't be encoded for web differently.

And your argument is moot anyway because this is introducing a significant fracture between Apple/mobile devices and desktop devices. People are still going to have to use another codec for their multiple TB and growing amounts of video!

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#326

Post by sigzero »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #94
dev_jim wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264 You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9).

> You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. Well i mentionned it. I'm at least partially intellectually honest :) > Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9) That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are. > There aren't (and pr…

There are hardware decoders but nobody uses them at this point. It will be a very long very painful process. I am not sure whether it is good or bad.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#327

Post by sbierwagen »

stanleydrew wrote: post #295
ubernostrum wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Google can support Flash and work towards openness Here's the thing, though. Mozilla and Google, over the past year, have basically used the video-codecs thing as a publicity stunt. LOOK AT ME I'M SO PURE AND OPEN AND NOT LIKE THOSE VICIOUS CLOSED EVIL APPLE NAZIS (except please please please don't ask us about all that proprietary stuff we still do, please ). It's hard not to see this as hypocritical. So it's pe…

Pretty sure Google open-sourced vp8 (the video codec in webm), which means they don't own it or exclusively control it. I don't know how much more open you can get.

VP8 is open source, but Google isn't accepting patches, and it resembles H.264 in a lot of ways... and H.264 is patented. Google hasn't been sued over it yet, but if they are, it probably wouldn't end well for them.

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#328

Post by sigzero »

bane wrote: post #279
Heff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which sucks for HTML5 video. Without Chrome, only about 5% of web users actually support HTML5 playback using h.264. Chart: http://videojs.com/2011/01/google-is-dropping-h-264-from-chr... Two things could end the format war. 1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) 2. MPEG LA removes all royalties from h.264

1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) Why? Aren't the iOS devices powerful enough to software decode WebM streams?

That would be incredibly slow.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#329

Post by dfox »

rabidsnail wrote: post #222
trotsky wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else's SOC?

Yes. The only smartphone makers that I can think of that design their own chips are Apple and Samsung.

Your assumption is valid only in case when you don't count smartphone makers that actually design their own complete phones and not license baseband implementation from someone :)
Post reply on HN