Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

WindowsVista567 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:07:04 GMT

Very interesting. I now know how one of my favorite Internet Explorer demos works.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

hAl — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:18:04 GMT

@Randy

Wer already know from years of existing experience that h.264 works very well on the internet. It is the most efficient format.

Every other format will require a lot of extra costs (more than h.264 licenses) and will cause a lot of extra wasted energy. Other less efficient formats are bad for the environment.

And nearly everybody already uses it for webvideo. Even Google with their competing format has been using h.264 for many years now and supports it in android, supports it in Chrome and Chromebooks and supports it on Youtube.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

@Randy — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:17:19 GMT

Reread the post again, slowly. You might not like h.264 because of the liability it puts on you but at least Microsoft already has licensed those standards and is free to implement them in IE without fear of patent lawsuits. Until Google officially backs their own proprietary standard with patent indemnification if Microsoft were to implement or even just to ship an existing implementation of it they would be liable to any patent lawsuits that may arise. If you want WebM to be as open as you feel the web must be then your pressure should be on Google to offer such programs.

Just because a company buys another company's video encoding tool and throws it onto the Internet it does not make it "open." There is no officially recognized standard nor is there any legal backing which alleviates the burden of liability. WebM is a ticking timebomb wrapped up in OSI good feelings and hype.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

Randy — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:29:38 GMT

@@Trish - **PRECISELY!!!*** as you quoted: "h.264. It's not going anywhere." it may be a great video format, but on the Web its useless due to being a patent encumbered format.

The Web is open, HTML is open, CSS is open... HTML5Video and HTML5Audio tags are part of HTML - thus they too must be open... this is where IE fails.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

A_Zune — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:09:46 GMT

Those patentholders on googles proprietary video format VP8 already surfaced 7 month ago.

fosspatents.blogspot.com/.../googles-webm-vp8-allegedly-infringes.html

"Thus far, 12 parties have been found to have patents essential to the VP8 standard."

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

@Trish — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:42:37 GMT

Patents trolls are a reality, and Google has yet to offer any indemnification to those who implement WebM. If Microsoft were to embed and distribute WebM with native support in IE and a patent holder does surface they can sue Microsoft. However, if IE defers to fallback to installed codecs, and the user has a WebM codec installed, they are effectively off the hook. What reason does MS have to stick their neck out there to support a non-standard proprietary (Google owns it, that's called "proprietary") video format over an industry standard (officially, ISO/IEC 14496-10) with well defined licensing that Microsoft already bought and paid for? Placating those few who side with the increasing irrelevant Mozilla on their political agenda? Safari and Chrome both play h.264 out of the box just fine. Even Opera on Linux will play h.264 if the appropriate GStreamer codec is installed. Virtually every piece of hardware uses h.264 and virtually every piece of video software works with h.264. The first *four* examples of source tags for HTML5 video in the current HTML5 draft specification and h.264. It's not going anywhere.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

Trish — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:32:00 GMT

@A_Zune why don't you explain how a company that owns a patent on licensing wouldn't do every last thing they could to get licensing fees from developers that use the technology? Ever hear of a company called Lodsys? Patent Trolls are a reality - and everyone that has been developing for at least 10 years is well aware that this is a slippery slope when you assume you are ok to use a file-format or technology that is patented/licensed.

There's a good reason why the Web is Open... and why HTML5 Video and Audio must also be open. Just because you feel taking a gamble with your financial security is fun doesn't mean the rest of us do.

HTML5 Video via h.264 is dead, HTML5 Audio via mp3 is dead. The only current solutions are Ogg, AAC, and WebM (and even WebM has some strings attached that need to be clarified)

Unfortunately IE backed the wrong horses - they have a change to rectify this in IE10 - the question is will they?!

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

dex3703 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:51:58 GMT

Boy I love "web development".

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

A_Zune — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:40:31 GMT

@Don

Why don't you ask the Mp3 licensing site what mp3 patents would apply to webserver serving files to a browser.

re: Under the Covers: Let It Snow…

Don — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:18:49 GMT

@Microsoft - please step out of the shadows and come forth and clear up the air about mp3 usage in HTML5 games!!!!!!

The vast majority of developers are aware of the licensing issues (except A_Zune) but clarification from Microsoft is necessary to continue.

Is Microsoft exclusively recommending AAC audio only? Did Microsoft make the payments they were required to for mp3 licensing on their HTML5 games?

Please tell us you led by example and paid the fees accordingly and on time. Microsoft fought to get annoying DRM and license encumbered audio and video formats pushed into IE - we'd like to hear that you felt the payments were worth the effort.

Oh and by the way your comment form doesn't save posts properly, readers must save their post comments and re-post on every comment submission - please fix this!!!