Time Warner, NBC Universal delay iPad support in preference to Flash - Page 3

From what I've read, the VP8 codec has many of the same patent encumbrances as h.264. So it may not end up being royalty free.

1) MPEG-LA owns H.264 patents, the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group and the W3C HTML working group are working on HTML 5. Closest I can give you:
http://www.vedetta.com/whatwg-drops-...-specification
Read Opera cannot support H.264 "due to the obscene cost of the patent licenses."
Motzilla can't support H.264 "because they can not obtain a license that covers their downstream distributors."

Thats really my whole point. H.264 licensing is a mess. If it becomes the dominate video codec, HTML 5 video become monopolized by big players like Apple and Microsoft. Apple should support VP8 or OGG to back up their claims of support open standards. Both VP8 and OGG are open source. Therefor are free from licensing issues.

According to this link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...s_downfall.php
To use H.264, it cost $5million a year.

WHATWG Doesn't want to pick only one codec. They just want one to be support on all browsers, but browsers are free to support anything else. And its more of a recommendation than something they plan to enforce.

From your very link:

Ian Hickson mentions that for video codecs to be included as requirement in HTML5 specification, the following needs to happen:
— Ogg Theora improves the quality-per-bit and video quality for HD, vendors will make Ogg Theora decoder chips available to the public, and major browsers will include Ogg Theora without getting sued.
— H.264 patents expire, which will no longer require license fees for H.264 support. I have no idea what makes you think that HTML5 has been trying to force H.264 support and deny any and all Theora support when it's codec independent.


That has not been your point. if that was your point you would have mentioned that Google bought VP8 as an eventual contender to H.264 so that it would have a fallback option in a few years or MPEG-LA would be forced to make H.264 free for all browsers.


How about a viable link next time:

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http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20L...n-10-02-02.pdf As we have been stating ad nauseum VP8 and Theora are no where close to being ready for the majority of the web. They have zero HW acceleration which is needed for mobile systems for playing video without stuttering and for saving battery life. They are not good quality compared to H.264 and they are not well designed at the moment. Does VP8 have potential in Google's pocket? Of course, that's why they bought it, but it's far from replacing H.264, if that is even possible. There are even issues with Theora and VP8 actually being "free". Saying it's free and actually being free are very different things and even if Google says it will cover all legal expenditures that doesn't mean that Opera and Mozilla will not be affected.

You are right. They would need to write an app to do DRM. Technically that is all Flash is though. A wrapper over H.264 video to do DRM. In this case they would need an Objective-C wrapper for the H.264 video instead.

Thats not wait I'm saying, Apple and Microsoft are pushing H.264 by not supporting OGG or VP8, in addition to their H.264. (Both Apple and Microsoft are part of MPEG-LA which owns H.264 patents).

Motzilla cannot support H.264 because of licensing issues, Opera cannot support H.264 because they can't afford it.


This was before VP8 was released as open source. VP8 is very close to H.264 in quality, and Intel is currently working on getting hardware acceleration support for it. H.264 has already been dominate for years so it does have a head start.

At the end of the day HTML 5 is supposed to be and open standard. The whole point of the video tag is to get video content out of an external flash player, and make it available to any browser to use. H.264 defeats this purpose as small developers simply cannot afford to support it. And by not supporting H.264 your browser is locked out of all HTML 5 H.264 video.

At this point only Safari, Chrome, and soon Microsoft have the money/ability to support H.264. Chrome however supports OGG and soon VP8. Safari and I.E. will only support H.264. That means if a video uses an OGG or VP8 codec, it can't be viewed on I.E. or Safari, a huge portion of the market. Apple and Microsoft are already starting to monopolize HTML 5 video. And I think thats why I think a lot of media companies are holding out on adopting HMTL 5, because of the codec issues. If Apple wants to encourage HTML 5 adoption, they would support VP8 in addition to H.264. Microsoft too, although I doubt they care. It seems they both are committed to continue to collect royalties off H.264 video.

This is just an example of how poorly you understand anything here. Media companies have long sense embraced H.264. Look at Blu-ray. Look at Netflix. Look at YouTube. Look at Hulu. Look at all the modern video being pushed through Flash or Silverlight. This is not some Apple conspiracy and it's independent of HTML5. This shouldn't be that hard!

Be honest with yourself, demos have already shown that flash mobile commands your hardware resources quickly while sucking up battery. For android or iPhone if it used flash, neither owner would find these problems acceptable for daily usage.

Yes, and H.264 shouldn't be associated with HTML 5. HTML 5 is an open standard. H.264 is a licensing mess. Plus again... if a company offered H.264 HTML 5 video content right now, only Safari and Chrome users could read it. Its not worth it. The sooner a codec is support on all platforms the sooner these companies adopt HTML 5. And hopefully, as I explained, its not H.264. H.264 does not equal HTML 5....

Apple can only help the adoption of HTML 5 by supporting more video codecs, VP8 and OGG.

Strawman. Apple has said no such thing, and they even said that they pay way more to the MPEG LA for royalties than they get back for their patents. There are literally hundreds of companies behind the tech behind H.264, so clearly while ideally there would be an efficient codec for video that is also hardware accelerated and not subject to patent trolls and is royalty free, there isn't. There's a reason why H.264 is used so widely... it's the best codec for the job. VP8 is very likely to get some patent suits against it, so even Google isn't supporting it like you said. They just simply published the spec in hopes of someone else taking the time to improve it. Anyway, VP8 is not a contender in the codec battles... it's likely that the codec quality is actually quite bad compared to H.264, since On2 is notorious for preaching how great its codecs are when in reality they aren't that good. After that, the patent trolls will come after people, because VP8 simply copies H.264 in many parts. And then, after that, you still have to have manufacturers produce hardware decoders for hardware acceleration. So, really there isn't a viable alternative now to H.264 as you would like to suggest. And Apple is doing what everyone else is doing, supporting H.264 because its the best option available. If WebM proved to have hardware support, have a reasonable defense against patent trolls, and is comparable in quality or better than H.264, it would be a no-brainer for Apple to include it on their products. As it is now, though, H.264 is the only option.

:SIGH: it's so annoying when someone responds without actually reading your post.

Ok... but H.264 can never be supported on every browser, because smaller companies can't afford it. OGG THeora was built to fail as they had to use less efficient algorithms to maneuver around patents. VP8 may not be as good as a codec as H.264 but can be improved. Intel is also developing hardware acceleration for WebM, at least for TVs.

Currently I.E. does not support any HTML 5 video, which is probably why these media companies have not embraced HTML 5. Their content is already in H.264, but in flash, however if Apple and Microsoft supported VP8, they'd at least have an option to make their content available on all browsers by using VP8, not just the big three.

But since Apple and Microsoft do not support VP8, and since smaller companies cannot afford H.264 licensing, companies would have to release media on both H.264 and VP8 to make it available to everyone. What will happen is these companies will not deem it worth it to support VP8, and small browser developers are locked out of content. Then both Safari, I.E., and Chrome enjoy a monopoly as H.264 is not available to other browsers (Flash currently prevents this). At least chrome will support all three codecs.

Apple has 1 patent with the MPEG-LA. And Apple does pay royalties to use H.264 like every other licensee.

My point is there is no technical reason why they cannot provide H.264 content without Flash. Their willingness to do so is a different matter.

Maybe they can't commit due to the ongoing sale to "Kabletown" (Comcast).

The browser doesn't have to support H.264. The browser can pass it along to the media framework in the OS which can play H.264


The largest video distributors on the web have embraced H.264. These media companies have not embraced it because they want to snub Apple.

Apple does, so does anyone who uses H.264. A lot of people use it. Apple does make money of the industry wide use of H.264.


Probably has more to do with I.E. not yet supporting any HTML 5 video.

Once again American corporate media giants learn nothing from the past. They are betting that visionaries like Dell, etc., will bail them out by creating iPad killers using cheap or free knock off OS'es. They still haven't gotten it have they. The Windows business model dies hard.

The browser wars are over, and there are 4 browsers that matter, Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari. Opera is irrelevant. All of the 4 significant browser vendors can afford H.264 licensing. All of the mobile device manufacturers can afford it. Ogg and VP8 are technically inferior, lack hardware acceleration, and will be found to be patent encumbered, and won't turn out to be viable options. (The only reason Google bought and are promoting VP8 is to create confusion and disruption, a state they see as beneficial to them.) H.264 is, for the foreseeable future, the only viable alternative.

Would I prefer a completely patent free, open source video codec? Yes, I would, but it's not happening anytime soon, and maybe never will, given the state of patents in this field. If Mozilla doesn't face up to reality soon, they will find that they got played big time by Google, and they will become irrelevant, with Chrome inheriting their market share.

You can rant and rave about, "It must be free!" but you are tilting at windmills, the state of video is what it is and wishes aren't going to make it otherwise.

EDIT: Does anyone really take it as truth that VP8 is not patent encumbered because Google said it isn't? This is a company with so little concept of the idea that intellectual property can belong to anyone but them, that you could almost say they have corporate borderline personality disorder. Google's claims about VP8 being free of patent liability have about as much credibility as their Claims that their Books program didn't violate copyright law.

Sounds like a great user experience

It has been mentioned before, Flash 9.4 does run on the Nokia N900

I know I shouldn't feed the troll. But these are important points.


Microsoft has nearly 40 patents in the MPEG-LA, and here is what they say about revenue.

Hachamovitch was quick to defuse allegations that Microsoft as a member of the MPEG-LA H.264 group was profiting from steering users to the video format. The company receives "less than half" the money in royalties than it puts in to get the rights for device users", he said.

Microsoft: H.264 in HTML5 about support, not cash


Support for the iPad has nothing to do with I.E.

+1 So true.\

Keep scratching. Mobile Flash 10.1 is beta not a released product and also won't run on most older versions of smartphones whether they are iPhone OS based, Android based or whoever.

For them it's also an assumption that Flash will be around forever. They wait till their hand is forced & then we hear the horror stories of what it cost them to rush out a solution. Fools, never put your eggs in one basket.

Now I can tell you these words were originated from someone who needed job security.

Anytime I see someone claim "this is the way we do it, this is the way we've always done it and this is way we'll continue to do it" I can't help but put my money on the other guy who is adapting with changing technologies, not remaining static.

Story is baloney.

Android 2.2 (or whatever is the name for Froyo) does have Flash 10 running and much as I have seen, it is running fine. I'm not sure how many old Android phones will be able to upgrade, but Nexus One will, so I'm guessing other relatively new phones will also (at least from Motorola Droid and on).

WebOS 1.4 was demoed with running Flash, not perfectly smooth in video but potential is there. Stronger hardware HP will (again, presumingly) be putting in their WebOS devices will help.

I don't know about BBs, W7... but I'd expect them to follow the trend. I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of this year iPhone is the only major player without Flash support.

We know there is no working version of Flash for iPhone, but it is not like Apple is encouraging Adobe to create one, now. Saying you will not let Flash on your platform usually tends to discourage people from spending time and money creating one.

EVEN IF Adobe meets their projections and EVEN IF 10.1 turns out to be any good, it requires an 800 MHz processor - so it would be incapable of running on the iPhone even if Apple were begging for it.

Look at how many phones in the market today have > 800 MHz processors. The percentage is tiny. Now, look at how many of those run Android 2.2 or have upgrades available for Android 2.2. The tiny percentage shrinks even further.

Yes, the 10.1 version for Android may actually get released sometime this year. And maybe they'll even release a WebOS version some time this year for systems over 800 MHz. That's still only an insignificant portion of the market. So, today, the percentage that can run it is zero. The percentage that MIGHT BE ABLE to run it by year end is probably single digits. The people who made the decision to use Flash for their mobile delivery are idiots.

And all of that even assumes that Flash 10.1 works. Every public demo so far has crashed and battery life is terrible, so even that assumption is questionable.

As others have pointed out, "running fine," is more than a bit of an exaggeration.

Also, as has been pointed out, Adobe hasn't shown that it can develop software, any software, that works well for more than one platform at a time, so, even if it were to (and it hasn't yet) develop a mobile version of Flash that runs well on one mobile platform, all indications are that this would be taxing the limits of their capabilities.

THANK YOU! I've said it before and I'll say it again LET THE USERS CHOOSE! I too am with the diabolical TV networks on this one (though my family disconnected our TV "programming" a good while back).

I must say, I LOVE following the flash debate. I'm on the edge of my seat!

not to mention 10.1 has now gone public beta.

speaking of exaggeration...

Depends what your bias is. All most people have are the sites looking for clicks on sensationalism. Until people personally verify stuff, in one ear and out the other. Sorry.

Your comment doesn't even make sense... So if using Flash is equal to handing your destiny to Adobe... what does using Apple's development environment, Apple's analytics, Apple's ad platform filtered through Apple's 'approved content' moderators equate to? I think it means handing your destiny over to Apple as well. The only difference is that there is only one platform worth supporting in Apple's view of the world. For a software developer or publisher who needs to target multiple platforms to reach the broadest set of customers, Apple controlling your destiny is a hell of a lot scarier than Adobe controlling it.

NBC Universal, I think I know where their thoughts are coming from. NBCU is so mismanaged that one of my friends quit his job at a big market NBC O&O TV station because he thought Jeff Zucker (NBCU CEO) was screwing things up. And shortly before he left, NBC outsourced promos at all their O&Os (NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, Miami, DC, Hartford) to Gari Media Group, an Atlanta-based company. He thought that how would someone in Atlanta know, say, Chicago, better than someone in Chicago proper? And NBC doesn't even have an O&O in Atlanta, just an affiliate.

But I call BS on the Time Warner part. Didn't they say somewhere that they wanted all their services iPad ready in one form or another by the end of the year? Still, Time Warner is a heavy Flash user. Heck, TBS and TNT just transitioned to Flash a few weeks ago from the streaming WMV-DRM that they had been using for years. TBS, TNT, and other Time Warner networks probably use H.264 in a Flash container, and if it is, a TBS or TNT iPad app is not only easy to do, but (probably) right around the corner.

Please identify where exactly you think I have exaggerated and how.

Once again, Soli being the only one that knows what they're talking about here at AI!

Jeez people: do a little reading before spouting off about things you don't have the slightest idea about.

From This AI Post
The problem is that video experts such as Garrett-Glaser are reporting that VP8 is not only unfinished and incomplete, but will also run afoul of the broad range of patents covering the latest video compression and decoding technologies. Those patents are held by a wide consortium of vendors who have pooled their technology together under the direction of the ISO's Motion Picture Experts Group.

did I say -you- exaggerated?

easy on the red bulls and learn to read.

I for one welcome our HTML5 overlords.