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Comment by tres | Hacker News Reader

Article states that Microsoft already has a h264 plugin for Firefox. I imagine MS will probably do the same for Chrome. They have big vested interest in ensuring that their DRM video will be ubiquitous. I imagine their licensing fees to companies like Netflix makes it a good business decision.

And Google can laugh all the way to the bank while they build and promote their own competing format.

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if you cared to look at said plugin, you would realize its worth nothing, it just replaces <video> with a windows media player active x object. it does not provide the same javascript api, it does not support scaling, pausing, transparency, overplay and so on, to make it short, its a joke. sadly it seams to be good enough for people like you to suggest it would actually work.

I make no qualitative judgement. I only state that the article says there is a plugin available and posit that it is an interesting development that Microsoft is putting resources into a competing browser.

The details of the implementation are interesting and concerning; however, your judgement of "people like me" is not germane, nor is it based upon any information in this context.

well, I'm not sure if I completely understand your line of reasoning, but note also, as clark-kent notes below, that Microsoft will also allow VP8 to be installed as a codec at the OS level and then work through IE9. The same will be true with Quicktime and Safari, but my understanding is that that is still hypothetical.

To be certain, lots of conjecture on my part. I just found it very interesting that Microsoft is essentially taking on the h264 licensing fees for Firefox by releasing a h264 plugin for the browser. (I'm assuming that MS will be footing the licensing fees -- or maybe they're just covered by a blanket $6.5 million fee, so it's just the cost of building the plugin that they really have to eat)

My extrapolation is a reach, but supporting h264 on Firefox doesn't make sense except if MS is seeing cash from h264 ubiquity.

Microsoft's Firefox add-on simply replaces the browser's <video> player with a Windows Media Player object, so the fees have already been paid for as part of their licence to include an H.264 decoder with all copies of Windows.

Supporting H.264 makes sense for Microsoft as a licensor of the patent pool.

As long as there's a codec installed for QuickTime to use, Safari will support it in the <video> tag. The same is true of Theora - no built-in support, but if you install the codec it starts working.

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