Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonlotito | Hacker News Reader

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> When they made their choice WebM wasn't an option because it didn't even exist yet.

IE9 is still in development. They can still choose to support WebM.

Apple could still choose to WebM support.

The point isn't that Apple and Microsoft can choose. Rather, you can't expect to ask Google to support H.264 and not ask Microsoft and Apple to support WebM. Apple and Microsoft don't want to support it. Fine. Google doesn't want to support it. Fine.

Neither H.264 and WebM are written into the standard. Fine.

Let the competition begin. The best technology that meets all the needs of the various groups will win.

> GIF is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand (or, if you want to reach for it, WebM is actually more at risk of a GIF-type scenario than h.264)

No, and no. I'd explain more, but I can't follow your logic. (Nor do I really want to try. Sorry, but you seem far too emotional about the topic. I'm probably wrong, but your comment comes off that way).

> Apple could still choose to WebM support.

In fact, Imagination Technologies, the people who make the GPUs for the iPhone(and the iPad as well, I think), have already announced full vp8 support in their next-gen hardware decoders, so it would be really easy for Apple to include webm support in the next iPhone or the one after that. And they're safe from any patent threats as well, since they're already MPEG-LA licensees. It will be interesting to see if they do.

> it would be really easy for Apple to include webm support

And Matroska support. Building container parsers that are resilient to fuzzing attacks is non-trivial. Can I assume you'd like trick play (ffw, rew, scrub), too?

Container parsing: it's not that hard. Besides which, they can use one of the freely licensed existing parsers to solve that problem.

Trick play is already implemented. If you have to do major rework of that area to support a new format, you're doing it wrong.

> Apple could still choose to WebM support.

Not in any meaningful way: as far as I know, there is no hardware decoding support for WebM in production. That leaves 150M iOS devices dead in the water, and a bunch of Macs having to decode HQ videos in software instead of relying on existing, well-supported and well-understood hardware.

> The point isn't that Apple and Microsoft can choose.

Apple and Microsoft also have been investing in h.264 for a long time. They're the least likely players to be able to change and (especially Microsoft) they're not very good at turning on a dime.

> you can't expect to ask Google to support H.264 and not ask Microsoft and Apple to support WebM

Why not? Google already had h.264 support, h.264 is the current leading video standard and enjoys wide support across the board, from hardware to software, from embedded to full-blown computers.

> No, and no. I'd explain more, but I can't follow your logic.

So you'd explain why I'm wrong even though you don't understand what I say? Original.

> No, and no. I'd explain more, but I can't follow your logic.

You'd explain why you disagree with what I say even though you don't even understand what I say?

Uh... right.

It's very simple:

>IE9 is still in development. They can still choose to support WebM.

I was talking with a friend yesterday and mentioned how hilarious it'd be if Microsoft decided to adopt WebM on WP7 and then attack Apple for being too closed. :)

I love the people shouting to the roof for standards support and how H.264 is a proper standard and how we should support it because it's being used everywhere.

I just can't help think of the OOXML debacle.

Yep, antimatter15 had to call it out.

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