[whatwg] The truth about Nokias claims

[Maik Merten]

Charles schrieb:
> AVC is a standard under both the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG)
> and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).

Right, but of course neither VCEG nor ISO/IEC have a monopoly on setting
standards.

> 
> Also, AVC is a de-facto standard. Every iPod supports it. Every PSP
> supports it. Every HD-DVD and Blu-Ray player supports it. The mobile
> ecosystem has long since adopted MPEG-4, and most video services either
> use AVC now or are on track to. Even Adobe, who’s had lots of success to
> this point with proprietary formats, has finally adopted it a
> replacement of VP6.

AVC *is* successful in its field. The Ogg codecs are successful in their
field (royality free codecs). Both are pretty "standard" depending on
what point of view one has.

> Comparing apples-to-apples, Ogg Theora isn’t a standard. It /was/ a
> proprietary On2 video codec, and it didn’t become a standard just
> because On2 gave everyone a royalty-free license, so you can see how
> some people might still think of it as proprietary. The fact that it’s
> open-source isn’t relevant, since of course there are open-source
> implementations of AVC as well.

It's a standard because it has a public spec and because an organization
issues those spec. A neutral non-profit organization I should say, which
may not mean much to a corporate environment but is adding to the
acceptance level in other environments.


> It was already old technology when On2
> gave it away, so it’s MPEG-1-like inefficiency makes it retro (to put it
> kindly) on the PC, and completely unsuitable for typicaly 3G mobile
> throughput.

Putting the Theora bitstream into the same efficiency class as MPEG-1 is
pretty questionable and I'm inclined to say your statement is wrong. I
also doubt the "completely unsuitable" for 3G throughput statement as
you don't even give specific requirements. Having said that even H.264
can be considered "old technology", albeit it *is* more sophisticated
than Theora, albeit I'd assume that e.g. on profiles used on mobile
phones it wouldn't even be able to take advantage of all of its coding
schemes.

Maik