21–30 of 68 posts
I expect Firefox and Chrome to adopt this within months, but IE10 is coming out soon. Does it mean it won't have it? And then we'll have to wait another year or more for IE11 to implement it? Not to mention IE9 and IE8 will probably never get it. I also assume WebM will replace Vorbis with Opus very soon?
I expect Firefox and Chrome to adopt this within months, but IE10 is coming out soon. Does it mean it won't have it? And then we'll have to wait another year or more for IE11 to implement it? Not to mention IE9 and IE8 will probably never get it. I also assume WebM will replace Vorbis with Opus very soon?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you say that? Most "hardware" decoders are DSPs that run software loaded onto them at runtime. This goes for anything with an OMAP, Tegra or Samsung (Samsung's own decode block) SoC in (that I know for sure) and probably almost everything else. Tegra3 and OMAP4 can decode WebM in hardware, for example.
The problem is that they never develop firmware updates so if those DSPs don't support yet another open codec on release day, they never will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you say that? Most "hardware" decoders are DSPs that run software loaded onto them at runtime. This goes for anything with an OMAP, Tegra or Samsung (Samsung's own decode block) SoC in (that I know for sure) and probably almost everything else. Tegra3 and OMAP4 can decode WebM in hardware, for example.
The problem is that they never develop firmware updates so if those DSPs don't support yet another open codec on release day, they never will.
Those updates might not make it through to consumer devices, but that used to be the case for things like GPU drivers too. Google pushed an updated SGX driver for the Galaxy Nexus with 4.1, and Apple pushes updates to their own drivers every release.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it was tested by the courts, you can appeal. And even after the appeal, you can appeal to a higher court, all the way to the Supreme. And even if was tested there, congress can pass a law that allows it. And even if that happens the Supreme court can strike down the law. And even if that happens, the public can mount a revolution and tear down the legal system. But, practically speaking, Opus has extremely go…
No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered. It's simply not in the nature of our patent system that something this complex can be unencumbered, unless it's with respect to an expired patent. I know my position causes a lot of cognitive dissonance with people, because it implies that the system is fundamentally unfair. Well, you can either take the red or the blue pill.
Who said you were wrong? Quite the opposite, I strongly agreed with you - anything can be encumbered, and anything includes this.
But the point is that Opus is as safe as you can possibly be from being patent encumbered. Everything is potentially encumbered, but there are things with higher or lower likelihoods. And there isn't any lower than Opus. If this is still too worrying for you to use, then you can't use any software at all.
How does Opus compare to Celt, its direct predecessor?
Silk is very good at speech and Celt is very good at music. It is like having gears in your car. You need low gears for one mode of operation and high gears for another. So they combined the two into one and made a single codec.
I imagine behind the scenes it has a transition mode from one codec to another depending on the configuration parameters.
Before someone chimes in with that XKCD strip: How does Opus compare to other codecs? Opus is distinguished from most formats for high quality audio (AAC, Vorbis, MP3) by having low delay and it is distinguished from most low delay formats (G.711, GSM, Speex) by supporting high audio quality. It meets or exceeds existing codecs' quality across a wide range of bitrates, and it operates at lower delay than virtually an…
There is no such thing as "unencumbered by patents". Unless you have a technology that has already been tested thoroughly in the courts, which is the only way you can really determine whether something would be deemed to violate a patent or not, you simply can't know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it was tested by the courts, you can appeal. And even after the appeal, you can appeal to a higher court, all the way to the Supreme. And even if was tested there, congress can pass a law that allows it. And even if that happens the Supreme court can strike down the law. And even if that happens, the public can mount a revolution and tear down the legal system. But, practically speaking, Opus has extremely go…
No matter how many times I'm downvoted, it's still not unencumbered. It's simply not in the nature of our patent system that something this complex can be unencumbered, unless it's with respect to an expired patent. I know my position causes a lot of cognitive dissonance with people, because it implies that the system is fundamentally unfair. Well, you can either take the red or the blue pill.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No updates for 18 months. Did they find any patents?
The mere threat is enough to keep people from investing much in these "alternatives." E.g., Steve Jobs wrote: "All video codecs are covered by patents," Jobs wrote from his iPad. "A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other 'open source' codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is diffe…
I expect Firefox and Chrome to adopt this within months, but IE10 is coming out soon. Does it mean it won't have it? And then we'll have to wait another year or more for IE11 to implement it? Not to mention IE9 and IE8 will probably never get it. I also assume WebM will replace Vorbis with Opus very soon?
Firefox already adopted it (it's in nightly builds). Chrome seems to have WontFixed it,