See this is why I am glad I am just a computer user and not a programmer or software designer or corporate lawyer. My eyes glazed over about halfway through the article. I am also glad I don't work for a large corporation. The verbal and intellectual gibberish these guys have to contend with on a daily basis is just completely ridiculous.
The idea of the H264 consortium appeals to me more than the chaos of open sourcing anything. Order is always better than entropy.
It's important to remember that Google's customers are the companies that advertise with it and not its users. So Google puts its own good ahead of the good of its users as a matter of course. If it didn't it wouldn't be serving its shareholders. A good analogy for Google's business practices are those of other advertising-supported businesses. The television networks, for example, are notorious for treating viewers badly because viewers aren't their customers. That's why your favourite shows get cancelled even if they win awards and gain critical approval. The networks know that something else would simply earn more advertising revenue in that spot; quality isn't a concern.
Google is simply exploiting the language of open source so it can disrupt markets where it feels its business model is threatened. Android itself is all about commodifying the smartphone market so that the only value to be made is from advertising, where they dominate. If another company has success with a 'closed' (where 'closed' simply means Google might not be able to advertise on it) product, that hurts Google's bottom line. Google benefits from the race to the bottom among Android handset manufacturers because it means the manufacturers can't acquire too much control. They benefit from nobody being able to make money from software now they've saturated the market with free software because a company that sells software, like Microsoft, might lock them out and they benefit from the Android Market being in disarray because it results in more ad-supported software.
You bring up some interesting points. This makes more sense, I suppose.
So the technology stack for content (and ad) delivery really doesn't matter to advertisers insofar as they aren't directly consuming the content. They benefit when the content reaches the masses and it results in sales. So I guess Google is an advertising company with it's own technology stack? It doesn't produce technology "for end users". It creates that technology for its advertising customers. Well then. All the more reason for consumers to favor companies that produce technology for them.
So its massive technical inferiority to H.264 (e.g. poor encode/decode performance, worse image quality at equal bitrates), lack of hardware support (= abysmal battery life for mobile devices) and poor production tools should all be ignored just because it's free?
But consumers do. Worse quality video with crappy battery life. No thanks.
I'll give you that one. Not sure what DED was smoking when he decided mobile Safari has a 95% market share.
Flash is a "winner" here is as much as this move by Google makes it exceptionally unlikely that HTML5 will kill flash. But your logic that it will therefore harm Apple is incorrect.
IE9 is going to support H.264 HTML5. All iOS devices support H.264 HTML5. Flash video supports H.264. As a content provider this means you can encode your video once (as H.264) and serve it up with two different wrappers: IE and iOS get the video in an HTML5 wrapper, and everything else gets the video in a Flash wrapper. Where is the incentive for the content provider to go WebM? Choose H.264 and it's easy to serve your content to everyone, choose WebM and you can't serve your content to iOS devices. It's a no-brainer.
Yep and Android devices will still get the video via a flash plug-in or some other plug-in. I agree with standardizing open technologies on the web but really providers should be supporting WebM and h.264 and the developers and end users can decide what's best. So I guess the next logical step is for google to tell us what image formats we have to use.
By the way, monopolies are not *necessarily* wrong. I'm having my Microeconomics exam next week! So I think I know what I'm saying In particular, all patents create a sort of monopoly, which is good because it promotes innovation. But it's a temporary monopoly: sooner or later, all patents do expire, and the technology becomes free for everyone.
Which is why I don't get this move by Google or Mozilla or Opera. The patents expire in what 2015?
The amount that Google would have to invest to bring WebM up to the robustness of H.264 is certainly substantial. Of course, they hope to leech off the work of "open source" idealists.
.
Video codecs have progressed so far I doubt very seriously that the open source community could contribute anything that would not infringe on many patents already held by the major players. It's not the largest community out their to begin with and if you really know your stuff you are employed and probably not in a legal position to contribute to an open source project.
Google simply wants to push technologies it knows violates the patents of other companies so that they can attempt to get those patents nullified in court because Google things they are "too big" to lose.
If I recall, they are free to use until 2015 at which point MPEG-LA can choose to charge and can raise the price by no more than 10% every 5 years.
If they aren?t charging now what is the starting rate because 10% more of nothing is nothing?
Will H.264 still be the best available codec in 4 years or will H.265 have finally being ratified?
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.
A quick update to my earlier post. Just did the HTML5 beta on YouTube again with Chrome and Safari. Chrome is pushing WebM and Safari h.264 and FLASH. All in 720p.
Chrome's WebM - 80% CPU usage, 6400 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari's h.264 - 20% CPU usage, 2800 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari Flash - 45% CPU usage, 5800 rpm on macbook 2,1
Flash is currently better then WebM in terms of CPU usage, fan speed and consequently battery life. If WebM is the only thing supported I will simply use flash instead when using Chrome.
A quick update to my earlier post. Just did the HTML5 beta on YouTube again with Chrome and Safari. Chrome is pushing WebM and Safari h.264 and FLASH. All in 720p.
Chrome's WebM - 80% CPU usage, 6400 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari's h.264 - 20% CPU usage, 2800 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari Flash - 45% CPU usage, 5800 rpm on macbook 2,1
Flash is currently better then WebM in terms of CPU usage, fan speed and consequently battery life. If WebM is the only thing supported I will simply use flash instead when using Chrome.
That?s not likely to change anytime soon, either. Flash is pulling H.264 which is HW accelerated. We?ll see if WebM gets included to HW like VC-1 and H.264. Intel isn?t listed on their supporters page, though AMD, Nvidia and ARM are.
Google forced H.264 to go license free for products that are given away. Good job Google!
My hope is that H.264 and WebM merge at some point. I'm sure Google will have some lawsuits over patent infringement with their WebM coming soon to a courtroom near you and me.
You bring up some interesting points. This makes more sense, I suppose.
So the technology stack for content (and ad) delivery really doesn't matter to advertisers insofar as they aren't directly consuming the content. They benefit when the content reaches the masses and it results in sales. So I guess Google is an advertising company with it's own technology stack? It doesn't produce technology "for end users". It creates that technology for its advertising customers. Well then. All the more reason for consumers to favor companies that produce technology for them.
I think so. I'd personally prefer it if, say, HP/Palm and (to a lesser extent) Microsoft were the other big competitors in the smartphone/tablet space rather than Google and its coalition of the willing. I'm interested to see what HP will show next month.
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.
No offence but this is just a ridiculous assertion.
There is no charge to the end user and a very minimal small charge to those that do the encoding. If you are talking about people "paying for it" because the cost to the producers is rolled into the hardware, then you are wrong in the specific sense as that tiny cost is actually *not* purposely figured in to the pricing.
You may be correct in the limited general sense that all costs incurred by a company are eventually rolled into the price whether it's done explicitly or not, but we are talking about possibly $0.02 on a device costing $700.00 in the case of the iPhone. So in this sense you are being technically accurate in terms of the detail, but disingenuous at the same time in the implication that this is a real charge that the consumer experiences.
That's a ridiculous argument. Apple, MS, Sony and all the rest are paying licensing fees for several different things. In comparison to the billions of dollars these companies make, the cost of H.264 is negligible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jensonb
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.
Comments
The idea of the H264 consortium appeals to me more than the chaos of open sourcing anything. Order is always better than entropy.
There are also HTML5 plug ins.
HTML5 plugins? You mean updating to a modern browser that supports HTML5?
It's important to remember that Google's customers are the companies that advertise with it and not its users. So Google puts its own good ahead of the good of its users as a matter of course. If it didn't it wouldn't be serving its shareholders. A good analogy for Google's business practices are those of other advertising-supported businesses. The television networks, for example, are notorious for treating viewers badly because viewers aren't their customers. That's why your favourite shows get cancelled even if they win awards and gain critical approval. The networks know that something else would simply earn more advertising revenue in that spot; quality isn't a concern.
Google is simply exploiting the language of open source so it can disrupt markets where it feels its business model is threatened. Android itself is all about commodifying the smartphone market so that the only value to be made is from advertising, where they dominate. If another company has success with a 'closed' (where 'closed' simply means Google might not be able to advertise on it) product, that hurts Google's bottom line. Google benefits from the race to the bottom among Android handset manufacturers because it means the manufacturers can't acquire too much control. They benefit from nobody being able to make money from software now they've saturated the market with free software because a company that sells software, like Microsoft, might lock them out and they benefit from the Android Market being in disarray because it results in more ad-supported software.
You bring up some interesting points. This makes more sense, I suppose.
So the technology stack for content (and ad) delivery really doesn't matter to advertisers insofar as they aren't directly consuming the content. They benefit when the content reaches the masses and it results in sales. So I guess Google is an advertising company with it's own technology stack? It doesn't produce technology "for end users". It creates that technology for its advertising customers. Well then. All the more reason for consumers to favor companies that produce technology for them.
So its massive technical inferiority to H.264 (e.g. poor encode/decode performance, worse image quality at equal bitrates), lack of hardware support (= abysmal battery life for mobile devices) and poor production tools should all be ignored just because it's free?
But consumers do. Worse quality video with crappy battery life. No thanks.
I'll give you that one. Not sure what DED was smoking when he decided mobile Safari has a 95% market share.
Flash is a "winner" here is as much as this move by Google makes it exceptionally unlikely that HTML5 will kill flash. But your logic that it will therefore harm Apple is incorrect.
IE9 is going to support H.264 HTML5. All iOS devices support H.264 HTML5. Flash video supports H.264. As a content provider this means you can encode your video once (as H.264) and serve it up with two different wrappers: IE and iOS get the video in an HTML5 wrapper, and everything else gets the video in a Flash wrapper. Where is the incentive for the content provider to go WebM? Choose H.264 and it's easy to serve your content to everyone, choose WebM and you can't serve your content to iOS devices. It's a no-brainer.
Yep and Android devices will still get the video via a flash plug-in or some other plug-in. I agree with standardizing open technologies on the web but really providers should be supporting WebM and h.264 and the developers and end users can decide what's best. So I guess the next logical step is for google to tell us what image formats we have to use.
You're using Internet Explorer?
Because if you're using Safari, Firefox, or Chrome, you're enjoying the benefit of open source.
I didn't say I don't use open source. The development process seems messy via open source. An organized standards based consortium seems less messy.
Safari may have open source components, but it is supported by a single company.
Agree.
By the way, monopolies are not *necessarily* wrong. I'm having my Microeconomics exam next week! So I think I know what I'm saying
Which is why I don't get this move by Google or Mozilla or Opera. The patents expire in what 2015?
Which is why I don't get this move by Google. The patents expire in what 2015?
If I recall, they are free to use until 2015 at which point MPEG-LA can choose to charge and can raise the price by no more than 10% every 5 years.
If they aren?t charging now what is the starting rate because 10% more of nothing is nothing?
Will H.264 still be the best available codec in 4 years or will H.265 have finally being ratified?
The amount that Google would have to invest to bring WebM up to the robustness of H.264 is certainly substantial. Of course, they hope to leech off the work of "open source" idealists.
.
Video codecs have progressed so far I doubt very seriously that the open source community could contribute anything that would not infringe on many patents already held by the major players. It's not the largest community out their to begin with and if you really know your stuff you are employed and probably not in a legal position to contribute to an open source project.
Look at what they did with Android and Java.
If I recall, they are free to use until 2015 at which point MPEG-LA can choose to charge and can raise the price by no more than 10% every 5 years.
If they aren?t charging now what is the starting rate because 10% more of nothing is nothing?
Will H.264 still be the best available codec in 4 years or will H.265 have finally being ratified?
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.
Chrome's WebM - 80% CPU usage, 6400 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari's h.264 - 20% CPU usage, 2800 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari Flash - 45% CPU usage, 5800 rpm on macbook 2,1
Flash is currently better then WebM in terms of CPU usage, fan speed and consequently battery life. If WebM is the only thing supported I will simply use flash instead when using Chrome.
A quick update to my earlier post. Just did the HTML5 beta on YouTube again with Chrome and Safari. Chrome is pushing WebM and Safari h.264 and FLASH. All in 720p.
Chrome's WebM - 80% CPU usage, 6400 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari's h.264 - 20% CPU usage, 2800 rpm on macbook 2,1.
Safari Flash - 45% CPU usage, 5800 rpm on macbook 2,1
Flash is currently better then WebM in terms of CPU usage, fan speed and consequently battery life. If WebM is the only thing supported I will simply use flash instead when using Chrome.
That?s not likely to change anytime soon, either. Flash is pulling H.264 which is HW accelerated. We?ll see if WebM gets included to HW like VC-1 and H.264. Intel isn?t listed on their supporters page, though AMD, Nvidia and ARM are.
My hope is that H.264 and WebM merge at some point. I'm sure Google will have some lawsuits over patent infringement with their WebM coming soon to a courtroom near you and me.
Contribute to any of the well-run open source projects and you may have a different opinion.......
Can you name a few?
You bring up some interesting points. This makes more sense, I suppose.
So the technology stack for content (and ad) delivery really doesn't matter to advertisers insofar as they aren't directly consuming the content. They benefit when the content reaches the masses and it results in sales. So I guess Google is an advertising company with it's own technology stack? It doesn't produce technology "for end users". It creates that technology for its advertising customers. Well then. All the more reason for consumers to favor companies that produce technology for them.
I think so. I'd personally prefer it if, say, HP/Palm and (to a lesser extent) Microsoft were the other big competitors in the smartphone/tablet space rather than Google and its coalition of the willing. I'm interested to see what HP will show next month.
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.
No offence but this is just a ridiculous assertion.
There is no charge to the end user and a very minimal small charge to those that do the encoding. If you are talking about people "paying for it" because the cost to the producers is rolled into the hardware, then you are wrong in the specific sense as that tiny cost is actually *not* purposely figured in to the pricing.
You may be correct in the limited general sense that all costs incurred by a company are eventually rolled into the price whether it's done explicitly or not, but we are talking about possibly $0.02 on a device costing $700.00 in the case of the iPhone. So in this sense you are being technically accurate in terms of the detail, but disingenuous at the same time in the implication that this is a real charge that the consumer experiences.
They are charging. If you own a copy of Windows, a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod, a PlayStation 3, a Blu-Ray Player or any other device that can play or record H.264, and you paid for it, you paid for H.264. What they are not charging for is internet streaming which is not behind a paywall, and they have extended that in perpetuity, meaning they plan never to charge for that.