The Magic updated to 1.6 a while ago, well the Google experience version (the one without HTC sense UI) did anyway.
SonyEricsson just released the X10 with 1.6 they say a 2.x update will come late this year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asherian
Where do you get your numbers? I'm not sure you understand that 2.0 vs 2.1 is a silly difference, 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0/2.1 are the OS versions right now.
Let's keep this debate on the level, please.
I work at one of the #1 mobile traffic websites in Canada, 75% of our hits come from 2.0/2.1, about 10% come from v1.5 (HTC Dream/Magic). The rest are 1.6 or mods.
Yeah, v1.5/1.6 won't support WebM but within a year the number of devices running 1.5/1.6 will be negligible. 2.0 and 2.1 devices will all upgrade to 2.2 in the near future.
It's like having an open house then choosing who you let in and charging them admission. It's not open if you do that.
It's like having open source code, but only letting people who pay money access the code. It's not open if you do that.
h264 is a standard, but it's sure as hell not open. The people who call it open are twisting the meaning. Look at the wiki for h264...nowhere does it say "open". It's not open, it's just an ISO standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
Look at it this way: HOW is h264 "open"?
h264 is an open standard. It is not free. Open does not mean you can't charge.
Funny how the author glosses over the very serious issue of H264 royalties - "Oh Mozilla is just too cheap to pay…" H264 licensing is $5 million dollars a year (for software with wide distribution. Not exactly chump change. There are also issues with filming in H264 - cameras that do so (even some very expensive one) don't include the license to use that footage commercially, which is a way for MPEG LA to extort money out out of independent filmmakers.
H264 is really only "open" to those with extremely deep pockets.
Don't think you understand -- I'm not talking about making money from the patent pool/MPEG-LA. That money is chump change to Apple and MS (and Google).
There are other benefits, such as patent indemnity. They're basically part of a large alliance so there's little risk exposure. If h264 violates someone's patent, MPEG-LA gets sued...not Apple. In reality, MPEG-LA just invites that company into the patent pool to start collecting money also rather than engage in lawsuits.
(PS: If you're going to be pedantic, MS has 65 in the pool, not 75 last I checked)
Well I wasn't TRYING to be pedantic, I was trying give a sense of the scale. So if that made you bristle then I apologize for my figures not being accurate.
As I see it, that isn't just a reason for Apple. Any user of H.264 will have the same benefits of patent indemnity. Now if Google were to extend patent indemnification to WebM users, then they could feel more secure about taking it up. It might also convince the big players like Apple and Microsoft to incorporate it.
I would like to read more analysis from experts that this thing is "fully baked" though. Google is really pushing it out there like it's ready to go head-to-head. It reminds me a bit of when Windows 7 was a public beta. Testers would submit their comments and be told that those parts were committed and Microsoft had no intention to change it. It seems to conflict with Google's big emphasis on "open". Open as in accessible, YES. Open as in free, YES. Open as in community input, NO. The spec itself is frozen. But then I find a lot of Google's stance on "open" systems to be very schizophrenic. For all their railing against Apple's "walled garden", Google's search is a big black box.
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
That's a really great and informative post. Does this mean the iPad and the iPhones that have come out or are coming out will not be able to support this WebM format? Did Apple jump the gun?
No, I think that you jumped the gun in your desperation to continue your ridiculous attacks on all-things apple.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
If this new codec gets better, or even to the same level of quality and ease of use as H.264, Apple will support it. It's almost a guaranteed thing based on their history and their actual goals. If both were equal and this one was free (assuming the H.264 owners started asking for money), then Apple would go with it and ditch H.264 rapidly.
Great post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pats
h264 is an open standard. It is not free. Open does not mean you can't charge.
Correct. And as someone pointed out earlier, it is most likely that end-users won't have to pay a cent for it directly.
The licensing issues with MPEG-LA are pretty serious for hobbyist-turned-one-hit-wonder. MPEG-LA stands to be the gateway for all content if h.264becomes the dominant standard.
Firstly, I thought H.264 (& previous H.1xx/2xx/3xx standards) was the denomination of the ITU, not ISO. ISO MPEG-4 part 10 (Advanced Video Codec) is a different standards body but same product.
Secondly, it already is the dominant standard, has been for years. The media industry (& definitely the best quality content) exists outside of the computing/web market. If you're watching commercial HD content on services like cable, satellite, BD (VC-1 is now a minor) & even the digital cinemas - you're watching H.264. The vast majority of HD video content is consumed in this way. The biggest provider of ownable, legal video downloads (iTunes) also adopted the standard, along with the MPEG-4 audio, 5 years ago.
And that's the real challenge with all of this. When iTunes released Movies & TV Shows in H.264 the content creators had no encoder expertise and the quality was useless, panned by the critics. It ensured AppleTV never got off the ground. Thanks to Blu ray they now have good H.264 encoders and the same spec video looks great. So unless those same real content providers are prepared to encode WebM to any degree of quality this whole technology standard (open or licensable) is stuffed.
The licensing issues with MPEG-LA are pretty serious for hobbyist-turned-one-hit-wonder. MPEG-LA stands to be the gateway for all content if h.264becomes the dominant standard.
I guess it doesn't fit the Apple PR spin to mention that H.264 is controlled by MPEG LA. The format is only formalized by an ISO standard. The underlying technology(aka patents) does NOT belong to ISO.
Word is that the 1.5 year old HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 won't ever get an official Android v2.2. What are the chances the iPhone 3G gets v4.0 the day of or just before the G4 iPhone hits shelves?
Funny how the author glosses over the very serious issue of H264 royalties - "Oh Mozilla is just too cheap to pay…" H264 licensing is $5 million dollars a year (for software with wide distribution. Not exactly chump change.
$5 million per year for copies that Mozilla distributes itself. That wouldn't cover any 3rd parties who redistribute it. Redistribution of Firefox is explicitly permitted -- even encouraged.
For example, each of the various Linux distributions which maintain their own repository version of Firefox would not be covered by Mozilla's $5 million - they'd have to register with MPEG-LA as separate distributors paying separate royalties.
If you download and burn DVDs of one of those Linux distributions, and then give those DVDs to your friends, then you yourself become a distributor, and theoretically either you would have to register with MPEG-LA and start paying royalties, or else each of your friends would have to purchase the license directly from MPEG-LA before they started using the software. (However, it is dubious whether it would even be possible for MPEG-LA to seriously keep track of distribution on that level, so admittedly it may be difficult to enforce.)
Google's Chrome browser also has an open-source counterpart named Chromium. Chromium can be freely redistributed but official releases of Chrome cannot -- Official Chrome can only legally be obtained directly from Google. That's because Google's H.264 license only covers copies of software obtained directly from Google. Chromium is generally obtained from downstream distributors.
Chromium source code ships from Google to 3rd party distributors with the H.264 decoding feature ifdefed out, specifically to avoid the patent licensing issues for downstream re-distributors. Several of those re-distributors have commented the H.264 portion of Chromium back in, but technically, any such redistribution of an H.264 enabled Chromium is being done without inclusion of an H.264 license, leaving any recipients of the software open to potential H.264-related lawsuits depending on their country of residence.
Comments
What about an "open bar" at a wedding? Does that prove your point?
Last time I was at a party with an open bar, I certainly paid for it the following morning.......
SonyEricsson just released the X10 with 1.6 they say a 2.x update will come late this year.
Where do you get your numbers? I'm not sure you understand that 2.0 vs 2.1 is a silly difference, 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0/2.1 are the OS versions right now.
Let's keep this debate on the level, please.
I work at one of the #1 mobile traffic websites in Canada, 75% of our hits come from 2.0/2.1, about 10% come from v1.5 (HTC Dream/Magic). The rest are 1.6 or mods.
Yeah, v1.5/1.6 won't support WebM but within a year the number of devices running 1.5/1.6 will be negligible. 2.0 and 2.1 devices will all upgrade to 2.2 in the near future.
I'm not twisting anything.
It's like having an open house then choosing who you let in and charging them admission. It's not open if you do that.
It's like having open source code, but only letting people who pay money access the code. It's not open if you do that.
h264 is a standard, but it's sure as hell not open. The people who call it open are twisting the meaning. Look at the wiki for h264...nowhere does it say "open". It's not open, it's just an ISO standard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
Look at it this way: HOW is h264 "open"?
h264 is an open standard. It is not free. Open does not mean you can't charge.
Funny how the author glosses over the very serious issue of H264 royalties - "Oh Mozilla is just too cheap to pay…" H264 licensing is $5 million dollars a year (for software with wide distribution. Not exactly chump change. There are also issues with filming in H264 - cameras that do so (even some very expensive one) don't include the license to use that footage commercially, which is a way for MPEG LA to extort money out out of independent filmmakers.
H264 is really only "open" to those with extremely deep pockets.
Don't think you understand -- I'm not talking about making money from the patent pool/MPEG-LA. That money is chump change to Apple and MS (and Google).
There are other benefits, such as patent indemnity. They're basically part of a large alliance so there's little risk exposure. If h264 violates someone's patent, MPEG-LA gets sued...not Apple. In reality, MPEG-LA just invites that company into the patent pool to start collecting money also rather than engage in lawsuits.
(PS: If you're going to be pedantic, MS has 65 in the pool, not 75 last I checked)
Well I wasn't TRYING to be pedantic, I was trying give a sense of the scale. So if that made you bristle then I apologize for my figures not being accurate.
As I see it, that isn't just a reason for Apple. Any user of H.264 will have the same benefits of patent indemnity. Now if Google were to extend patent indemnification to WebM users, then they could feel more secure about taking it up. It might also convince the big players like Apple and Microsoft to incorporate it.
I would like to read more analysis from experts that this thing is "fully baked" though. Google is really pushing it out there like it's ready to go head-to-head. It reminds me a bit of when Windows 7 was a public beta. Testers would submit their comments and be told that those parts were committed and Microsoft had no intention to change it. It seems to conflict with Google's big emphasis on "open". Open as in accessible, YES. Open as in free, YES. Open as in community input, NO. The spec itself is frozen. But then I find a lot of Google's stance on "open" systems to be very schizophrenic. For all their railing against Apple's "walled garden", Google's search is a big black box.
one more video format is exactly what Adobe needs.
the more fragmented "web video" format is the better for Flash.
Let's hope the HTML5 standard adds support for all video formats.
amen html5 ftw
It's CODEC Agnostic.
It's the browser vendors/OS vendors that manage the codecs.
Correct.
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
Correct.
And things are moving fast.
That's a really great and informative post. Does this mean the iPad and the iPhones that have come out or are coming out will not be able to support this WebM format? Did Apple jump the gun?
No, I think that you jumped the gun in your desperation to continue your ridiculous attacks on all-things apple.
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
If this new codec gets better, or even to the same level of quality and ease of use as H.264, Apple will support it. It's almost a guaranteed thing based on their history and their actual goals. If both were equal and this one was free (assuming the H.264 owners started asking for money), then Apple would go with it and ditch H.264 rapidly.
Great post.
h264 is an open standard. It is not free. Open does not mean you can't charge.
Correct. And as someone pointed out earlier, it is most likely that end-users won't have to pay a cent for it directly.
The licensing issues with MPEG-LA are pretty serious for hobbyist-turned-one-hit-wonder. MPEG-LA stands to be the gateway for all content if h.264becomes the dominant standard.
Firstly, I thought H.264 (& previous H.1xx/2xx/3xx standards) was the denomination of the ITU, not ISO. ISO MPEG-4 part 10 (Advanced Video Codec) is a different standards body but same product.
Secondly, it already is the dominant standard, has been for years. The media industry (& definitely the best quality content) exists outside of the computing/web market. If you're watching commercial HD content on services like cable, satellite, BD (VC-1 is now a minor) & even the digital cinemas - you're watching H.264. The vast majority of HD video content is consumed in this way. The biggest provider of ownable, legal video downloads (iTunes) also adopted the standard, along with the MPEG-4 audio, 5 years ago.
And that's the real challenge with all of this. When iTunes released Movies & TV Shows in H.264 the content creators had no encoder expertise and the quality was useless, panned by the critics. It ensured AppleTV never got off the ground. Thanks to Blu ray they now have good H.264 encoders and the same spec video looks great. So unless those same real content providers are prepared to encode WebM to any degree of quality this whole technology standard (open or licensable) is stuffed.
McD
It is MPEG-LA, not ISO.
The licensing issues with MPEG-LA are pretty serious for hobbyist-turned-one-hit-wonder. MPEG-LA stands to be the gateway for all content if h.264becomes the dominant standard.
I guess it doesn't fit the Apple PR spin to mention that H.264 is controlled by MPEG LA. The format is only formalized by an ISO standard. The underlying technology(aka patents) does NOT belong to ISO.
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
Excerpt:
This is just brutal:
Wow. x264 developers trashing a rival codec in a forum.
That's got to be at least as biased as Microsoft/Adobe/Google/Flash/Zune/Droid/Intel (pre 2006)/etc bashing on AppleInsider.
Wow. x264 developers trashing a rival codec in a forum.
That's got to be at least as biased as Microsoft/Adobe/Google/Flash/Zune/Droid/Intel (pre 2006)/etc bashing on AppleInsider.
Yes, because the linked post is just trash talk with no technical specifics to back it up.
Word is that the 1.5 year old HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 won't ever get an official Android v2.2. What are the chances the iPhone 3G gets v4.0 the day of or just before the G4 iPhone hits shelves?
Funny how the author glosses over the very serious issue of H264 royalties - "Oh Mozilla is just too cheap to pay…" H264 licensing is $5 million dollars a year (for software with wide distribution. Not exactly chump change.
$5 million per year for copies that Mozilla distributes itself. That wouldn't cover any 3rd parties who redistribute it. Redistribution of Firefox is explicitly permitted -- even encouraged.
For example, each of the various Linux distributions which maintain their own repository version of Firefox would not be covered by Mozilla's $5 million - they'd have to register with MPEG-LA as separate distributors paying separate royalties.
If you download and burn DVDs of one of those Linux distributions, and then give those DVDs to your friends, then you yourself become a distributor, and theoretically either you would have to register with MPEG-LA and start paying royalties, or else each of your friends would have to purchase the license directly from MPEG-LA before they started using the software. (However, it is dubious whether it would even be possible for MPEG-LA to seriously keep track of distribution on that level, so admittedly it may be difficult to enforce.)
Google's Chrome browser also has an open-source counterpart named Chromium. Chromium can be freely redistributed but official releases of Chrome cannot -- Official Chrome can only legally be obtained directly from Google. That's because Google's H.264 license only covers copies of software obtained directly from Google. Chromium is generally obtained from downstream distributors.
Chromium source code ships from Google to 3rd party distributors with the H.264 decoding feature ifdefed out, specifically to avoid the patent licensing issues for downstream re-distributors. Several of those re-distributors have commented the H.264 portion of Chromium back in, but technically, any such redistribution of an H.264 enabled Chromium is being done without inclusion of an H.264 license, leaving any recipients of the software open to potential H.264-related lawsuits depending on their country of residence.