Mike Melanson on HTML 5 video

Mike Melanson on HTML 5 video

Posted Feb 4, 2010 16:01 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141)
Parent article: Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and why we're standing with the web

I cannot help but post Mike Melanson's take on HTML 5 Video, the codecs used therein and how it competes with Flash. Humorous quote:

Another aspect I have to appreciate about the debate surrounding HTML5 video is the way that it brings out the positive spirit in people. Online discussions are normally overwhelmingly negative. But advocates of the HTML5/Xiph approach truly believe this could all work out: If Apple decides to adopt the Xiph stack, and if some benevolent hardware company would churn out custom ASICs for decoding Xiph codecs, and if those ASICs were adopted in next quarter’s array of mobile computing devices and netbooks, and if Google transcodes their zillobytes of YouTube videos to the Xiph stack, and if Google throws the switch and forces the 60% of IE-using stragglers to either change browsers or go without YouTube, and if Google thereby forgoes many opportunities to monetize their videos, then absolutely! HTML5 video could totally unseat Flash video.

Ironically Mike is both the main person working on the Linux port of Adobe Flash and the original author of the VP3 spec on which Theora was based. He always had a weak spot in his heart for fringe multimedia formats, but he surely had no idea what kind of genie he was letting out of the bottle there...

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