[html5] OGG--Why vs

[Robert O'Rourke]

Nathan Ziarek wrote:
> I would agree with the idea of a pipe dream, unfortunately. Who 
> creates the browser media player? Who creates the various codecs for 
> the media player? Media has become a pretty political issue -- and I 
> don't see an easy route to the centralized video player.
>  
> I like the idea of a video and audio standard on the web, but with no 
> clear winner in the marketplace, I sure wouldn't want to be the person 
> making that decision.
>  
> nz
>

The media player would be part of the browser UI itself, like form 
controls (eg. <select>, they all have the same functionality across 
browsers but different browsers render them differently by default. It 
would be an integral part of every web browser. By codecs I mean the 
plugins we have to download eg. quicktime, real player and so on, they 
would be behind-the-scenes.

Say as a VERY rough example of what I mean:

<mediaplayer>
    <display width="400" height="300" />
    <playlist>
       <video src="xxx.mov" format="mov" />
       <video src="xxx.mpg" format="mpg" />
       <audio src="xxx.mp3" format="mp3" />
       <audio src="xxx.ogg" format="ogg" />
    </playlist>
    <progressbar />
    <controls>
        <button type="play" />
        <button type="pause" />
        <button type="stop" />
        <button type="prev" />
        <button type="next" />
    </controls>
</mediaplayer>

If I didn't have quicktime installed I'd be prompted to install it to 
watch the .mov as is the case in the present day. This code could be 
written once by a web developer and then its up to the web browser to 
handle playing the files if that makes sense.

Cheers,
Rob