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Comment by chaosmachine | Hacker News Reader

"Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™."

I guess windows and linux users need not apply.

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I believe the VLC folks are working on HTTP live streaming support. Microsoft has implemented it in SilverLight but not in WMP yet. I'm sure Apple is (partly) doing this to kickstart the standard.

VLC supports playback already at least on Linux. I believe Microsoft is just using the same name to describe what they are doing in SilverLight but it isn't based on Apple's spec.

I'm sure this has a lot to do with the broadcasters supporting it already for the iPad. Some of them have done so since before launch. The new Apple TV platform will surely build on top of that and I'm guessing you will get to see the same iPad CBS app running on a TV.

Pretty funny how that sentence is preceded by "based on open standards".

It could simply be that no one else has implemented those open standards. Apple isn't responsible for adding support to other platforms, so it's technically accurate if the standards are indeed open, regardless of whether other people have chosen to implement them.

It's just a draft yet so it's not an open standard yet http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-...

So, is HTML5 not an open standard either? I had understood that in the common parlance it was.

We're kind of splitting hairs at this point, but HTML5's standardization is a foregone conclusion given that it is backed by all major browsers. This protocol from Apple is just a proposal and it may never be adopted by other vendors or any standards body, which would leave it as an open non-standard protocol.

Cool, thanks for the info. I guess if it's splitting hairs, then Apple is at least reasonably justified in making the claim they do.

So why do people go after Microsoft when one can save to .docx format which is based on a real open standard

I don't have much first-hand knowledge of that subject, but here is what I have read.

docx:

   * Is horrifically complicated.
   * Is not likely to ever be completely implemented by any third party.
   * Does not accurately describe the behavior of MS Office.
   * Was rammed through the standards process in a way that demonstrated partisanship more than technical merit.

Whereas this offering by Apple does not seem to exhibit any of those properties.

Office Open XML is a pretty contentious standard: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Ope...

HTTP Live Streaming uses standard HTTP transactions and has been submitted as an internet draft with the intention of becoming an open standard [1].

Is there an HTTP Live Streaming client for Linux?

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-...

HTTP Live Streaming is intended to be part of the VLC 1.2 release, it's available in the current nightly builds right I believe.

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