Firefox to support Theora video [LWN.net]

Firefox to support Theora video

Posted Aug 7, 2008 11:33 UTC (Thu) by hthoma (subscriber, #4743)
Parent article: Firefox to support Theora video

I would like to comment on this statement:

"Due to the fact that it isn't controlled by a licensing authority with little or no interest
in improving it, there is hope that Theora, or some descendant of it, could produce superior
results some day."

WMV may be controlled by Micro$oft, but e.g the MPEG codecs are by no means controlled by the
licensing authority, at least not in a way that prevents improvement. In fact there is fierce
competition between the different vendors of MPEG codecs to improve the quality of their
implementations.

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Firefox to support Theora video

Posted Aug 7, 2008 20:57 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Improving the quality of implementation, yes. But it's harder to actually extend the format
itself -- witness the various unofficial extensions to MP3, none of them have become very
widespread.

Firefox to support Theora video

Posted Aug 8, 2008 8:43 UTC (Fri) by hthoma (subscriber, #4743) [Link]

Well, the "official" successor to MP3 is AAC, and the successor to that is HE-AAC. And these
are in widespread use, e.g. in the iPod or in 3G mobile phones.

Usually the *users* of standards don't want them to change, because they want to support a
potentially large installed base for a long time. This is especially true in consumer
electronics. (Take MPEG-2 video as example. This was finalized in 1995 and is still in
widespread use.) The situation is somewhat different in the computer world. You can always
download the latest and greatest codecs, but even this may be annoying sometimes.

If it works, it is obsolete...

Posted Aug 11, 2008 7:46 UTC (Mon) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

(Take MPEG-2 video as example. This was finalized in 1995 and is still in widespread use.)

In fact, one could say MPEG-2 has just started its life as the mainstream video coding... In Finland, the analogue TV transmission were cut off only about a year ago, in favour of the the DVB system, which uses MPEG-2. In most other European countries analogue TV is still in use.

Naturally all techies now say we now have a totally obsolete digital TV system which soon must be replaced with a modern system using MPEG-4 and HDTV. Theoretically true, but by the time the system and all users have been upgraded again, MPEG-4 will certainly be itself obsolete...

The situation is somewhat different in the computer world. You can always download the latest and greatest codecs, but even this may be annoying sometimes.

Not to mention the loss of easy access to material in older formats when codec support for it is dropped in favour of the latest and greatest. (eg. try decoding Indeo4-compressed AVI files on a current system (Linux or Windows, does not matter - possible, but requires a codec hunt).