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HV5 now less the video and audio
July 1st, 2009 | Author: peter
After all the goo gah about how HTML 5 video (which I christened HV5) may put an end to the predominant use of Adobe Shockwave Flash for video use on web pages, now look what has happened.
W3C has decided that because there is little consensus on what codec to use (Ogg was the main contender afaik) that they can not include it as a pre-requisite of the standard.
Ian Hickson, one of the primary authors of the HTML 5 draft at the Worldwide Web Consortium, made the announcement on the WHATWG mailing list on Tuesday.
If this continues, then that will end the open standard for video and audio in HTML 5, and mean that (optional) third party plug-ins (like Adobe Shockwave Flash ROFLOL) “WILL” still be required after all.
It’s a little crazy, even for me.
A base standard of a plug-in’less browser with video and audio would have been great for everyone. There was nothing to stop people ADDING other codec support via plug-ins and wotnot. But at least it would have made a noise (aka shown a video) out of the box.
Of course “WHICH” codec they chose was a BIG issue, but apparently too big of an issue.
I’m not sure what the problem with the choice of an open source Ogg could have been, other than it knocks the status quo with Apple, Adobe. RealVideo and every other video codec “seller”.
Anyway as it stands at the moment, until enough people can agree on anything, there is no base audio and video support in HTML5.
SO HV5 is dead. Long live… erm… Adobe Shockwave Flash 
YAY!
So is no standard better than a pssibly feeble standard?
Posted in
Ian Hickson’s commented
After an inordinate amount of discussions, both in public and privately, on the situation regarding codecs for
I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML 5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined, as has in the past been done with other features like![]()
and image formats,
The current situation is as follows:
* Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora in Quicktime by default (as used by Safari), citing lack of hardware support and an uncertain patent landscape.
* Google has implemented H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome, but cannot provide the H.264 codec license to third-party distributors of Chromium, and have indicated a belief that Ogg Theora’s quality-per-bit is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.
* Opera refuses to implement H.264, citing the obscene cost of the relevant patent licenses.
* Mozilla refuses to implement H.264, as they would not be able to obtain a license that covers their downstream distributors.
* Microsoft has not commented on their intent to support
(Sorry if I’ve mischaracterised any positions above; the positions are relatively subtle and so it’s likely that I have oversimplified matters.)
I considered requiring Ogg Theora support in the spec, since we do have three implementations that are willing to implement it, but it wouldn’t help get us true interoperability, since the people who are willing to implement it are willing to do so regardless of the spec, and the people who aren’t are not going to be swayed by what the spec says.