Cisco’s OpenH264 Now Part of Firefox

blogs.cisco.com

8 pointscpeterso2 comments

TL;DR: Cisco's solution to binary plugins in Firefox is a "binary module" downloaded from Cisco.

Snippets from the text:

"One big barrier remains: users can’t collaborate directly from their web browser without downloading cumbersome plugins" ... one of the major stumbling blocks in adoption of this technology is a common codec for real-time video ... Cisco ... providing ... a binary module that can be downloaded ... today’s latest release of Firefox, which will automatically download and use Cisco’s OpenH264 binary module ... The topic of a standardized codec will once again be addressed by the IETF in its November meeting. It is our hope that announcements like the one today will ... pave the way for a decision."

A decision that requires an open source web browser to download a binary module from a third party?

Another option would be to use the free and open source video codec that's already in every WebRTC-enabled browser, without any binary modules.

Interoperability is critical for WebRTC to gain traction and the WebRTC spec does not define mandatory video codec. Firefox and Chrome support both VP8 and H.264. Microsoft and Apple only support H.264.

http://webrtchacks.com/webrtc-video-codec-discussion

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