Mozilla To Support H.264 249
suraj.sun writes with a followup to last week's news that Mozilla was thinking about reversing their stance on H.264 support. Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker and CTO Brendan Eich have now both written blog posts explaining why they feel H.264 support is no longer optional. Eich wrote, "We will not require anyone to pay for Firefox. We will not burden our downstream source redistributors with royalty fees. We may have to continue to fall back on Flash on some desktop OSes. I’ll write more when I know more about desktop H.264, specifically on Windows XP. What I do know for certain is this: H.264 is absolutely required right now to compete on mobile. I do not believe that we can reject H.264 content in Firefox on Android or in B2G and survive the shift to mobile. Losing a battle is a bitter experience. I won’t sugar-coat this pill. But we must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives. Failure on mobile is too likely to consign Mozilla to decline and irrelevance." Baker added, "Our first approach at bringing open codecs to the Web has ended up at an impasse on mobile, but we’re not done yet. ... We'll find a way around this impasse."
Good move (Score:5, Insightful)
better live to fight tomorrow, rather than become irrelevant
Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Interesting)
They have recently declined to pledge that they won't sue over standards essential patents like H.264, instead of demanding 2.5% of proceeds of devices(ad revenues in this case). Apple and Microsoft have pledged this.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/regulators-to-google-you-can-buy-motorola-but-we-still-dont-trust-you.ars [arstechnica.com]
Interesting to see Google becoming the patent trolls over H.264 that it previously warned others over and recommended WebM.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Funny)
Given that Firefox is free, 2.5% of revenues from Mozilla would be $0.00, and still satisfy the agreement. Right?
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Most likely that 2.5% doesn't apply to what you pay for firefox but to their global income.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox is free to final users, but someone (Google at least) is definitely footing the bill.
Google is paying for access to Firefox users through search bar and default home page. They are not supporting Firefox out of kindness.
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Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that's the point of the pool (Score:5, Informative)
Key patents are also held by... actually, there's a list [wikipedia.org]. A long one. Will all of them agree not to sue too?
By joining the pool, the ones on that list have put their patents under a common license. So as long as you buy a license from the pool, then yes, they have agreed not to sue you.
(That's no help against Google/Motorola, or patent trolls that aren't in the pool, however.)
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or better yet... why doesn't Firefox on Android use the standard, pre-licensed, OS library to play back h.264?
All Android devices support h.264 playback these days and it's baked into Android's media playback architecture, so it's prelicensed by the device manufacturer.
I don't think an app needs to pay in order to use h.264 playback if it's already been paid for and provided for everyone else to use.
Heck, Firefox on regular PCs can do the same - Windows 7 supports it, and I'm sure Firefox could leverage other plugins like QuickTime to support h.264 playback on other OSes (really, Apple's giving away a h.264 decoder, for free. Licensed that they have to pay for! Each download costs Apple money!)
Not sure what they want to do with Boot 2 Gecko though, since there won't be a pre-licensed library already.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly my understanding of what they're doing. They're not licensing it themselves, they're just going to rely on the OS implementaiton where one exists.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm pretty certain I was playing H.264 content in VLC under Windows XP SP3 last year before the partition got infected, nuked, and reformatted for Linux space. So obviously there are H.264 codecs that can be installed.
If a user purchases or licenses or otherwise obtains a codec, of course it should be accessible! It doesn't have to be provided by Microsoft to be valid. Heck, most of the codecs I use aren't installed or available from Microsoft.
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Oh please, it would be utterly *insane* to pledge to not sue anyone over patents because that is how the game - disgusting as it is - is currently being played by the likes of Apple (and in a more indirect and shady way, by Microsoft). People need to get over the fact that Google isn't holy and can't be the good 'do no evil' guy here as long as this patent situation is allowed to spiral out of control.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox isn't implementing h.264 though. They're simply going to call the system codec if the OS has one. Typically the OS vendors that do that also offer patent indemnification for their users, so if someone sues you for using h.264 in FIrefox on Windows, Microsoft would get involved because they already paid to license it to Windows users.
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Which, by the way, is a much better solution than the stupid "OH GOD WE HAVE TO DECODE IT IN THE BROWSER" that they originally cited as a reason they couldn't support H.264. You know what the best thing about decoding in the browser is? You get to either not take advantage of hardware acceleration, or write a multitude of different implementations to take care of every unique hardware setup. Awesome!
Codecs are a service that are almost universally an OS-provided thing. Windows, Linux, Mac, all of them have
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:4, Informative)
Because Motorola is suing Apple and Microsoft over standards essential patents with exorbitant fees, in the classic way of bait-and-switch once the standard is in place.
And Google specifically declined to make the same promise as Apple and Microsoft about this issue.
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Because Motorola is suing Apple and Microsoft over standards essential patents with exorbitant fees, in the classic way of bait-and-switch once the standard is in place.
Um, I thought it was tit for tat versus Apple and Microsoft abusing their software patents against Android.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, yes - because Google has a long patent trolling history and Mozilla is obviously at the top of their "To sue" list.
Yahoo wasn't a patent troll either, until it was [pandodaily.com]. And Mozilla would very quickly become enemy no1 at Google if they ever switched to Bing or another search engine. It'd be all-out war.
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The search bar is easy to switch to bing. Click and hold, select bing, Done!
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It's not google so much as it's Motorola with Google's blessing.
I'm not going to call Motorola a patent troll because they're not, per se. But they watched competitors (Samsung and Apple) overtake them, they watched their revenue dry up and the red ink flow. And they turned to the dark side.
And this isn't just suing Apple or Microsoft -- they started threatening to sue all the other Android manufacturers before Google bought them for $12 billion.
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I heard WebM isn't as good as H.264. It would be hard to remove it by that alone. Add to that the fact that H.264 is popular and i think we can all agree it isn't going away just yet.
Re:Will Googorola sue them? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh geez, this was not an easy one. So it reads that WebM is just a container anyways but VP8 is the only video codec it currently uses. VP8 sounds equivalent to or only slightly inferior to H.264 (which could change in WebM's favor as encoders improve). One critical thing that jumped at me was the WebM container doesn't appear to support subtitles at all. That could also change in the future.
So WebM is a container only for VP8 video and vorbis audio. H.264 is a video codec that can be used in another container like MKV.
I don't understand the opposition (Score:5, Insightful)
We currently use MPEG1, MPEG2, and JPEG in our browsers (and TVs) but the world has not collapsed, or our personal savings wiped out.
I don't see any problem with moving onward with MPEG4 audio and video (AACplusSBR)(h.264)(ATSC 2008).
OSS advocacy or maybe zealotry (Score:5, Insightful)
They wanted a completely patent and royalty free standard. Now I can accept that is the preferable way to go but it wasn't very practical. The problem was nobody in the open and unpatented world wanted to get their shit together and develop a next gen video format in a timely fashion. So AVC got standardized and started to get implemented everywhere since it gives quite good quality/bit. Once it was huge and implemented in near everything, there was movement to create an open standard but too little, too late. When standards get entrenched, they get entrenched hard. GIFs are a great example, people still use them all over despite PNG being more or less in every way superior.
Well FF wanted to fight back against that and so said "No AVC evar!" They backed WebM, which had Google gotten done 3-5 years earlier, might have had a shot, but they are finding it just isn't feasible.
So AVC is what we have now, and probably will for a long, long time. When the next better standard comes out, it'll be hard to get people to switch because AVC is "good enough". We finally have a "good enough" video streaming solution, meaning it offer the kind of quality we want and can do so in bandwidth we have.
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>>>GIFs are a great example, people still use them all over despite PNG being more or less in every way superior
My ISP (and Opera's Turbo) can compress GIFs and JPEGs prior to sending them, and thereby speed up webpage loads. Not so with PNGs. As for the rest of your post I agree completely; the OSS crowd acted too late with their development of a new video standard. (And WebM really is not better than MPEG3 in quality; it's inferior.)
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(And WebM really is not better than MPEG3 in quality; it's inferior.)
I think you mean MPEG4 (the original MPEG4pt2 which was kinda like DivX or H.263L), as opposed to the "new" MPEG4pt10 which is known as AVC or H.264. There is no MPEG3. The standards process that was going to lead to MPEG3 (aka HD-MPEG2) encountered the roadblock that none of the proposed techniques was much better than MPEG2 at the proposed resolution and bitrate so it was cancelled which is why HDTV on first-gen satellites and terrestrial broadcast still used MPEG2 compression that was originally develop
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That's the BS. This was just Google's play to push a standard they define over a standard defined by their competitors (Apple, and Microsoft chief among them) because owning one of the largest online media properties AND the file format would've given them a lot of leverage. As things stand now the competition technically has leverage over YouTube and Google through control of a format Google must support to remain competitive (the reason they left their Firefox homies high and dry by continuing to support
Re:OSS advocacy or maybe zealotry (Score:5, Informative)
This was just Google's play to push a standard they define over a standard defined by their competitors.
Utter nonsense. WebM/VP8 are fully open and free of patent license fees. Defined by Google perhaps, but controlled by Google, no, that is the whole point of a patent-free standard.
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When standards get entrenched, they get entrenched hard.
QFT.
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There has been a "good enough" solution for video playback on web pages for many years. It is the one that replaced ubiquitous Quicktime/WMV/Real selectors on major web sites. It is no longer considered good enough mainly because of efforts by Apple, Google, Mozilla and most recently Adobe themselves to declare it so. The reason encumbered MPEG-4 video is now considered "good enough" is because there hasn't been sufficient promotion of unencumbered alternatives by those with clout. I'm particularly disappoi
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GIF was developed in the early 80s by CompuServe (national BBS) and I don't remember anyone fighting against it? On the contrary the user community was still small but they embraced GIF. It gradually became the defacto standard when you wanted to share images across multiple platforms (Atari, Commodore, IBM, Mac). When Mosaic browser introduced webpages with images, GIF was already the default.
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Mozilla browsers have never included the ability to decode MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. They have included the ability to use plugins to interpret any content a plugin is designed for, including MPEG video and Flash applets. Mozilla can and do include JPEG, PNG, SVG and even GIF decoding in their browsers without paying anyone for a patent license or otherwise getting permission. Decoding of any MPEG standard media (with the possible exception of ancient, very inefficient MPEG-1 video) requires a patent license from a
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That's already how things are, and they plan to use those APIs to implement H.264 decoding to avoid shipping the codec (and paying license fees).
The only catch there is that XP does not have that, and won't be getting it. It might be irrelevant in 3-4 more years, but it's certainly very relevant today.
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Also, while XP does not have the h264 decoder by default, the user can download ffdshow and it will play h264. Really, how hard can it be?
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That's already how things are, and they plan to use those APIs to implement H.264 decoding to avoid shipping the codec (and paying license fees). The only catch there is that XP does not have that, and won't be getting it. It might be irrelevant in 3-4 more years, but it's certainly very relevant today.
This is not quite true. XP does support DXVA version 1, which allows for some hardware-accelerated decoding, but it is more limited than DXVA 2 which is available in Vista and 7. This page [microsoft.com] contains details
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So what is the problem with making an extension for XP which does H.264? Or just having XP do the flash original?
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Because in 4 years (see 2016) when the MPEG-LA is forced to make a decision on what to do about H.264, everyone will be at there mercy. So between now and them, if your media support has been flourishing, and suddenly comes to a screeching halt, your market share will as well.
The license [mpegla.com] (PDF) says on page four:
The first term of the License runs through 2010, but the License will be renewable for successive five-year periods for the life of any Portfolio patent on reasonable terms and conditions which may take into account prevailing market conditions, changes in technological environment and available commercial products at the time, but for the protection of licensees, royalty rates applicable to specific license grants or specific licensed products will not increase by more
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License requires DRM to be implemented with a straight handshaked path all the way from the video card to the output device
That's the Blu-Ray license requirement, not H.264. It's not relevant to web browsers.
It also is annoying for third world countries and some netbook owners with starter editions of Windows 7 who do not have these codecs.
Windows 7 Starter doesn't support the DXVA [wikipedia.org] API?
Any PC video hardware made in the last 5 years or so (except the Intel Atom's crappy chipset) supports H.264 (and VC-1) d
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There isn't really much overlap between MPEG-LA and MPAA members; the MPAA are a bunch of motion picture producers, distributors and exhibitors, the MPEG-LA is a bunch of technology companies, and institutions like Columbia University and Fraunhofer. There are some tenuous links: Sony is a member of the MPEG-LA and a division of Sony is an MPAA member, Apple is an MPEG-LA member and the (now deceased) former CEO of Apple was the chairman of The Walt Disney C
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Do companies pay a license fee to be allowed to render jpegs?
No. The baseline JPEG standard was specifically made to be royalty-free. There are some patents (probably expired or near-expiration by now) that covered the arithmetic coding option for JPEG, which is why no one ever used that encoding method and most JPEG software doesn't support it. A couple years ago, a company called Forgent tried to assert a patent on JPEG, but they got beaten back and didn't succeed in extorting any money from anyone.
I still don't think..... (Score:2, Insightful)
What about, for example, wanting to show a video with certain mandatory commercial points during the main video, which the user cannot skip? Not that I'm a big fan of this, but at the same time I can respect that a company might still find this sort of thing desirable.
You can get a flash video player to do this easily, but to the best of my understanding, can't be done so easily with just html5 and a <video> tag. Not that
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With just a tag? No, not possible. In combination with javascript? Very possible.
There are plenty of javascript libraries out there that might get you most of the way there, like this one here [projekktor.com].
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It is not a flaw in HTML that it can't be used to subvert the will of a user as completely as a proprietary solution. I'll be very happy to avoid any web site which doesn't switch to functional open standards because of this. However, I'm sure it would be easy to implement GUI controls which work sometimes and not others in Javascript. Someone who knew how the underlying technology worked would be able to circumvent this, but the vast majority of users wouldn't bother. It's a similar situation to ad blockin
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The problem with javascript being that it's running on the client, and particularly since it is in source-code form, is subject to possible alteration.
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Flash is also running on the client, and can be easily decompiled if needed.
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Which is why services that rely on video interstitials use Flash Media Server to control this kind of thing from the server-side. More importantly, it allows for encrypted streams. For companies like Netflix & Hulu, HTML5 video won't be acceptable to content providers until it supports these kinds of features.
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How exactly do you control this kind of thing from server-side? The player still runs on the client, and hence it can still be hacked, encryption key extracted etc - especially when it's Flash, since it's bytecode that is trivially decompilable, not precompiled native code.
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Since the connections are streamed in chunks, Flash Media Server knows what media is currently playing and can't really be "hijacked" by the Flash client. It knows when the playing time is done and controls serving the next stream (interstitial ad, movie, whatever) to the client. The Flash client is basically a dumb terminal in this respect. [note: this is only regarding FMS when serving via RTMP streams]
Adobe makes some dumb mistakes, but they put a decent amount of effort into their DRM for media streamin
IMHO, they've already failed on Android (Score:2)
No flash support makes for a lot of web content I cannot access. Dolphin works great though, I just miss out on the automatic synchronization of bookmarks like I get with FF.
Desktops becoming more relevant, mobile is a niche (Score:3, Interesting)
It is true that firefox should try to work its way onto mobile devices. There was some talk about the alternative such as the Ogg formats that were not patent encumbered, one wonders if some sort of plugin for browsers like IE would have removed a barrier to adoption.
However, I think the idea that firefox will become irrelevant if they do not make their way onto mobile is dubious, because desktops will remain the primary means of computing, for many reasons. This is due to the fact that desktops are superior and a better value overall, mobile devices are only good in a niche usage when in a car on in a subway or out and about town. However, at home in the evening, mobile devices provide a drastistically worse usage characteristics and value than desktop. Do we really think that its a good idea to trade in your 20" screen, full sized keyboard and fast, memory expansive system for a 4" screen with a chiclet sized keyboard or some overpriced tablet that gives far less computing power and reliability than a desktop system? It seems absurd to me.
I do think that desktops will be used in conjunction with a mobile device, like a smart phone and or lap/netbook and that allowing these two to share data will be important (hello, remote desktop anyone).
Smart phones are a very specific usage niche, they only really make since when one is on the go, in their car, on a subway, or walking about town. This is a trade off because the mobile device provides much worse user experience and value than a desktop, which is only tolerable where portability is important. At home, in the den, the desktops strengths vastly excel over a mobile device, and in that place the mobile has absolutely no advantage. So, desktops will be used at home, few people want to do spread sheets, work on a collage paper, play a 3D game or such on some lousy mobile device.
Another fact is that since the mobile has a smaller display and different usage characteristics, the GUI is customized for that environment, however, the GUI that works well on a mobile, such as tabs, does not work very well on the desktop where full window system is very workable. So these two classes of computing device will have different UI designs.
It is true there has been growth in the smart phone sector. However, this should not be read as these becoming more popular than desktop, but that the mobile platform is unsaturated so far so that there is more room to growth. This growth as well is due to a technological tresh-hold that has been reached recently which has made smart phones viable for purposes. However, this is a business cyle, eventually mobile sales will fall of significantly, and i expect that mobile and desktop sales will eventually equalize as people have purchased both and enter more of a long term wear out replacement cycle on mobiles as with desktops.
As well, desktops are a better value in general for computing, providing higher speeds and more RAM for lower cost. They are also a general all in one computing device which can fill the role of DVR, Game console, office management, home management, communications and web browsing, telephone and video chat from home, and so on. Doing all of this with a desktop general purpose computer is a much, much better value than buying a bunch of seperate specific purpose computers like a wii or a tivo. It is far less wasteful becuse all of these devices have a general purpose computer and it makes sense to do all of these functions with a single general purpose computer rather than 3 seperate devices. As CPU speeds have increased and RAM has increased, a single desktop computer has enough resources that gaming, DVR, and office functions can all be done simultaneously. All of this results in desktops being able to multiple things for less cost making them a better value.
Mobile devices are a niche device and eventually sales of these will decline. Desktop sales will remain steady over time due to the much better value and better and more versatile usage characteristics.
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Is this satire?
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Nope. Actually its pretty logical. Mobile devices are great for on the go, such as in a subway. But are just lousy at home. Destops will always be the best value and experience at home. Also, i said that mobile smartphone market is unsaturated, hence the growth, eventually the growth will stop as everyone who wants to buy the phones has one, and it enters more of a replacement cycle type thing where people replace their phones when they become worn out.
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Notice on Youtube the lower income looking people in a trailer typically we be on a phone commenting on showing a friend a song or video clip? Same is true with minorities who are statistically poorer.
Rich people own desktops and some offices. In places like India more people go on the web with phones than desktops. This trend will continue as costs go down. Phones will be the prefered method for teenage girls to communicate and use the web even if they have a computer at home for homework.
It is not a niche
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Eventually many will get tired of having to use a tiny screen (even 15" is tiny compared to my 27" monitor) and all of the inflexibilities of a tablet. They will also get tired of the carpal tunnel and taking 1 minute to type a sentance on a crappy screen or chiclet keyboard.
If tablets came first, desktops would be considered the next great thing that will replace tablet. You mean you can actually choose and replace your own mouse, keyboard and monitor? You can actually have the unit upgraded or service, ev
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"However, I think the idea that firefox will become irrelevant if they do not make their way onto mobile is dubious, because desktops will remain the primary means of computing, for many reasons."
I can't claim to have read the entire comment, but this is close enough to the comment I was going to make. Basically, I see mobile phones, and their presently non-desktop OSs as a temporary thing. I mean, can't we all agree, that 20 years from now, we'll probably be wearing some device on our body, smaller than
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I'd rather not have your corporate/government tracking and electronic body monitoring thing so I can be monitored 24 hours a day by facebook. I enjoy my privacy and being able to get away from the electronics, such as going out on a nature walk. Your idea is right out of 1984 Orwellian nigthmare. No thanks.
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> DVR - mobile can do that just fine
Not at all. Mobile devices aren't capable of dealing with any of the various random video formats that a DVR may need to handle.
> New flash: users don't care about RAM, super-overclocked multicore 4 GHZ CPUs or any other such acronyms.
Without such a machine, their mobile device will be out of luck as it has limited ability to decode video. It needs a real PC to do all the "heavy lifting".
Never mind little things like storage and tuners.
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I dont think many people will find watching movies on a 4" screen to be a great experience. the point is, desktops provide far better value and experience. Same for web pages. The idea of trying to read a web page on a 4" screen is lame.
Also mobile devices are lower powered, have less disk space and memory and so on than a desktop, leading to a worse user experience and less value.
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I disagree on the web and the game console. It would be really sheer stupidity for something to walk into a best buy and trade say they want to trade in their 20" screen and full size keyboaerd for a 4" screen and chiclet keys.
If mobile devices had come along first, Desktop computers would be the upgrade.
The mobile devies are useful, but people misunderstand what people use them for. Its a niche device for mobile use. At home desktop is a far better user experience.
Also most users do care about value, which
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I have a huge 27" monitor. I have a big full size ergonomic keyboard. Terabytes of hard drive space. A nice mouse and joystick. Surround speakers. 16 GB ram. quad core 3 GHz. You can keep your tablet. I will keep my nice big desktop.
Glad to see it (Score:3)
I'm really glad to see Mozilla making the pragmatic move. I understand it's ultimately a question of their own self interest; but in this case that dovetails nicely with what's best for their customers, in my opinion.
The best of all worlds would be for Google to continue development of WebM so it reaches quality parity with h.264. Right now I think it's harder for WebM to gain traction when most of the "pro" arguments are about licensing issues and gloss over any technical deficiencies.
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No actually this is going suck. Let me tell you what will happen. Many or possibly all of the major distributions are going ship Firefox / Seamonkey binaries without h264 support compiled in. Its going to be just like the mp3 fiasco a couple years ago.
Microsoft and their kind are going to run around say pfft, Linux boxes can't even play web video, you need us for multimedia again. Linux users are going to nod and wink at each other and download libx264 and do their own Firefox / SeaMonkey / ffmpeg build
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Firefox is going to hand H264 off to the OS. So it will be compiled in but it will either be an optional dependency where it just doesn't work if you don't install (or the distribution doesn't install for you) the pluggin that ties your version of Linux to the h.264 handler.
Now the distributions of course won't incluse a h.264 handler in their default repository....
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I'm really glad to see Mozilla making the pragmatic move. I understand it's ultimately a question of their own self interest; but in this case that dovetails nicely with what's best for their customers, in my opinion.
The best of all worlds would be for Google to continue development of WebM so it reaches quality parity with h.264. Right now I think it's harder for WebM to gain traction when most of the "pro" arguments are about licensing issues and gloss over any technical deficiencies.
It's easy to say that the WebM folks should just "do something better", but unfortunatly many of the simple techniques that they could use to get better quality w/ the same framework (predictive motion-compensated transformed block encoding), would likely tread on the patent portfolio of H.264. Most video compression experts are pretty sure many of the VP8/WebM features/limitations are a result of engineering around existing well-known patents.
Doing something better would probably mean stealing mindshare o
Re:Glad to see it (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not really about self-interest at all.
If not supporting H.264 isn't reducing H.264 usage, but reduces the influence of Firefox by turning users away from Firefox, and increases the usage of Flash vs HTML5 video, then not supporting H.264 is a net lose for freedom and standards on the Web and supporting H.264 is the right thing to do for our mission.
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That's right, Windows XP does not have a h264 decoder, so all the anime fansubs I have been watching I had to imagine the video while reading the file in a hex editor. Oh wait, I downloaded ffdshow, installed it and magically my computer started playing h264 files.
Not only that, but with CoreAVC and hardware acceleration, I can play 720p videos on my UMPC (also Windows XP), while flash can barely play 480p because it does not support the hardware.
Good... good... (Score:2)
What about non-mobile clients? (Score:2)
Firefox Mobile... h.264 is not your main issue. (Score:2, Interesting)
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Dumb idea (Score:2)
This is a classic dumb idea, if you want to do this create do it via a plugin. The reasons for the browsers declining popularity is simple, performance...
Re:Hardware Acceleration (Score:5, Insightful)
It's critical, even with multi-core, if for no other reason than battery life.
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It's critical, even with multi-core, if for no other reason than battery life.
Because firing up the GPU is such a good way to save power?
Unless you've got a review sample of the new Nvidia cards, your GPU is going to be on a larger process than your CPU and generally consume more power for the same amount of work. Power savings over GPU decoding of video content are a thing of the past, and have been for a long time. GPUs being massively parallel by nature doesn't help shit when CPUs have 4+ more cores and can selectively throttle frequency and voltage, and even power down, unused
Re:Hardware Acceleration (Score:4, Informative)
You're funny.
A specialized part is always going to trump the "jack of all trades". That's rather the point of having the specialize part.
Claims of this kind are especially funny considering that ARM CPUs simply don't have the ability to deal with the vast bulk of video content already out there. That's why these SoCs have special GPUs to begin with.
An ARM would be dead in the water without special purpose silicon for video decoding.
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You're funny.
A specialized part is always going to trump the "jack of all trades". That's rather the point of having the specialize part.
Claims of this kind are especially funny considering that ARM CPUs simply don't have the ability to deal with the vast bulk of video content already out there. That's why these SoCs have special GPUs to begin with.
An ARM would be dead in the water without special purpose silicon for video decoding.
Not only is that not an axiomatic truth, a GPU is in no way a "specialized part" for decoding an MPEG stream.
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Yup, that's exactly it, especially when it comes to mobile: just about any modern smartphone has at least some hardware acceleration for video decoding (and often encoding). It makes an enormous difference in terms of battery life. VP8 has made little or no headway into the hardware space (it's a chicken and egg thing - vendors won't put it on the chips if there's no demand for it, and there's no demand for it because it's not supported on the chips).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What made it worse was Firefox really messed up when they did that crazy version numbers issue just to copy Google chrome as if the Version Number was the key to success. What that did was Show how desperate Firefox is, then their choice to snub their noses at valid complaints from business usage just made it worse.
So, Mozilla copying Google's version numbering scheme and release schedule made Firefox *worse* than Chrome? Okay, then...
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So, Mozilla copying Google's version numbering scheme and release schedule made Firefox *worse* than Chrome? Okay, then...
Actually yes. Version upgrades in chrome are transparent to the user. I don't care if chrome updates to version 324...I don't know even know what version of chrome I'm running.
When firefox updates, it make you go through a huge hassle of clicking approve on update boxes, checking to see if your extensions are broken, realizing half your extensions ARE broken, looking for new ones, etc. If they made their upgrades as transparent as chrome does, it wouldn't be a problem. But a rapid release schedule is a ter
Re:not a troll (Score:5, Informative)
So, Mozilla copying Google's version numbering scheme and release schedule made Firefox *worse* than Chrome? Okay, then...
Actually yes. Version upgrades in chrome are transparent to the user. I don't care if chrome updates to version 324...I don't know even know what version of chrome I'm running.
When firefox updates, it make you go through a huge hassle of clicking approve on update boxes, checking to see if your extensions are broken, realizing half your extensions ARE broken, looking for new ones, etc. If they made their upgrades as transparent as chrome does, it wouldn't be a problem. But a rapid release schedule is a terrible idea when upgrading is a hassle.
Many people aren't thrilled with the idea of silent updates, for sure, the hassle of updating past versions was horrible. Fortunately, it's pretty easy now, and I haven't had any add-ons break since v8 or so. v13 will bring silent updates.
Language pack FAIL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What made it worse was Firefox really messed up when they did that crazy version numbers issue just to copy Google chrome as if the Version Number was the key to success. What that did was Show how desperate Firefox is, then their choice to snub their noses at valid complaints from business usage just made it worse.
So, Mozilla copying Google's version numbering scheme and release schedule made Firefox *worse* than Chrome? Okay, then...
Chrome does transparent updates... not only are you not prompted to update, but you usually don't even know you've updated unless you check the revision number.
To contrast, Firefox not only gives you a dialog saying "Firefox updated, restart Firefox!" but also follows this with an in-your-face addon-compatibility dialog the first time the new version starts.
Oh, and Firefox changes something in the visual style every other version or so.
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Yup, it keeps you informed of what it is doing rather than doing so silently and surreptitiously.
Funny, I haven't noticed a visual change since FF4, whereupon I promptly reverted its appearance back to the FF3.6 style.
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But, yeah, firefox would be nicer if there was an _option_ to automatically download and install updates without nagging or getting in your way.
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Re:What makes Chrome better? (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefox has become my webapp IDE these days. Firebug (and things that let me log to firebug from the server-side code) + SQLite manager + a variety of tools for mangling http requests and responses + a variety of tools for creating your own requests, all in one tabbed application. It's perfect!
Chrome has become my web browser though.
IT's like comparing Eclipse to say, Notepad. Eclipse is useful because of everything that it CAN do. Notepad is useful for everything that it can't do (and thus doesn't get in your way when you're not doing it).
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you mean like the 7 google tabs that I have open all the time whenever firefox is started? That's my home page. I've also currently got another 7 open for Stories Online plus another 8 open from SoFurry with another 5 for /. stories/comments and a few odds/ends. This is just my normal daily usage pattern.
As to shutting down firefox, why in hell should I do that? I've got an always on connection, a battery backup w/30 mins run time and I use the damn thing when ever I feel like it (retired/disabled). The on
Re:Failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mobile Smart Phone popularity is due to the face that you can bring it with you almost anywhere. Even an Ultra Portable Laptop has places where you would be looked at kinda funny if you took it with you, and the extra power of the laptop comes at a cost of battery life. A Smart Phone under moderate use gives you about 16 hours a day. A Laptop under that use gives you 3-5 hours. Also the Mobile Network is handy to get data when you are not near any other hot spots. Which does happen more often then you think. I got a smart phone figuring that it would be a fun toy... But I found it more useful then I thought.
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Wait, wait. You guys can just stop here with the insane comparisons, all right? Yes, a laptop has a lot more computing power and a keyboard. Yes, it's much more cumbersome to carry around. There are, obviously, other differences, but they don't really matter because those two are simply so big that they are the only deciding factors.
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I think the Transformer shows that not even that will differentiate them.
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Most people who use mobile phones *aren't* in the US, and don't pay for things in US dinars.
$80 is about the price of a cup of coffee here, and my monthly phone bill is about a tenth of that.
Re:Failure? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am pretty sure my mom uses her phone for web browsing more than she does her desktop. She always had a hatred for desktops, but she finds her slow, 2nd gen 2.1 crappy android phone rather likable for some reason.
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Yes, because 60 kB/s mobile browsing sure is the future for the internet.
Excuse me, are you from the past? You realize that mobile devices are shipping right now that can get something like 44Mb/sec down? One of the guys in my office just demoed his new iPad on LTE getting 44/20Mb/sec. Even my iPhone on AT&T's crappy oversubscribed 3G network in San Francisco can regularly pull 1Mb.
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I use mobile browsing once a month, and couldn't care less about it.
I use mobile browsing at least twenty or more times a day. I used to use minimo eight years ago on my PDA. Now that I use my smart phone regularly, I find myself still complaining in my internal dialogue about how ancient and clunky mobile Safari is compared to minimo. Mobile Safari wouldn't even allow animated gifs until a couple years ago!
Re:H.26x (Score:4, Funny)
Oh no! And I just spent my weekend encoding 100 TB of movies in H.265...
You should have went with h.266 and used the --backward-compatible flag.
Re: (Score:2)
The GPL always allowed for linking to proprietary "system libraries".
Troll harder next time.