Mozilla says "Audio codecs planned: G.711 & Opus. (Although royalty/license-free, we have no plans to support iLBC, iSAC and G.722)", so as it stands Firefox and Chrome could only interop with G.711 (aka uncompressed). https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Features/WebRTC
If IE, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome support it, there might be enough leverage on Apple to add it to Safari (Mac, iOS, maybe iPod), too. But without Chrome, Apple has the political cover to claim that "nobody uses it," so they can kill it.
I couldn't find any direct comparison, it looks like the IETF standardization work didn't even consider it worthwhile comparing to iSAC as it was judged outdated and "being phased out". (For example, Google participated in the tests, but they only tested against iLBC, not iSAC)
So it's likely that Opus is way better. It can certainly scale to much higher quality than iSAC can just by the format alone.
Qualitywise, Opus outperforms the state-of-the-art high-latency codec at music encoding while being a low latency music & speech codec itself. The only case where another codec outperforms Opus anywhere seems to be AMR, when encoding speech at very low bitrates (<= 6-12kbps). But AMR also has higher delay.
You can read the summary here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-codec-results-01
"Opus is a hybrid codec that internally uses both, SILK and Celt.
SILK was created by Skype (now Microsoft) and its patent license includes this gem: '5.1 Skype may terminate this License Agreement and any rights granted hereunder in the event that you or any of your Affiliates (i) materially breaches any of the terms and conditions of this Agreement; or (ii) asserts any patent or patent rights against Skype, its Affiliates, or its or their successors or assigns.'
So lets assume Motorola (owned by Google) tries to (counter)sue MS over some Android stuff: Suddenly the patent grant given by Skype becomes invalid and Google might have to remove Opus from Chrome. If it's popular by that time, this is a serious competitive disadvantage.
So better not help making it popular in the first place. "
I guess they're still hurting over that? :)
And Google with their proprietary WebM.
Patent-laden format for which you have to pay multi-million royalties is "industry standard".
Fact is that at least 12 organisations have already said that WebM infringes on their patents.
Google owns WebM and unilaterally makes the decisions about the direction of the format. H.264 is a standard and driven by a standards committee and process comprising numerous companies.
Also, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and innocence is strength!
Their disgraceful behaviour in blackmailing Microsoft over H.264 FRAND patents is of huge concern to anyone who cares about standards. Companies should be encouraged to get together and define industry standards with fair royalty rates. When that happens we ALL win. Clearly the ITC/EU agree.
Hopefully Google will see the error of its ways and change course.
Like the fact that it was Motorola that used their patents to negotiate with Microsoft long before it was acquired by Google. Or the fact that Motorola did it only after Microsoft blackmailed Motorola, using your rhetoric, with their patent portfolio in order to destroy Android not by making better products but by patent bullying.
It was NEVER a negotiation.
If you want to talk about bad guys in this mess, it's the companies who ended the détente by suing their competitors. That would be Microsoft and Apple. Asking companies like Motorola, HTC and Samsung to tie their hands behind their backs while Apple and Microsoft shake them down (or try to ban their products) is lunacy.
We need patent sanity in this country. But in the mean time, companies who are attacked have every right to defend themselves by any legal means they have available.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
And this isn't just about Motorola and Microsoft. This is about the principle of ALL contributors to a standard licensing their patents in a fair way. Regardless of whether they are being sued or not or how 'nice' the counter party is.
Do you not understand that if Motorola gets away with this then it will set in a place a precedent for all H.264 patent holders to go after any licensees ? You may not understand the implication but the ITC/EU clearly do.