[whatwg] The issue of interoperability of the <video> element

[Spartanicus]

timeless <timeless at gmail.com> wrote:

>> My main worry relates to the usability and accessibility of future audio
>> and video web content. Content including the wrapping should be free,
>
>you don't quite mean that. if a content producer wants to make pay
>content, it should be free to do that too, no? There are huge
>industries which drive a large portion of the industrialized world
>based on a premise like this.

I am referring to public web content. Subscription services, pay per
view or similar schemes are a different story. Consider that the
formats currently used to publish for example public web text and images
are open and free, this hasn't been an obstacle to commercially exploit
writing or image authoring. Obviously there is an issue with copyright
enforcement, but that is unrelated to proprietary content formats.

>Unless they're targetting the mobile market which is basically
>dominated by Opera and WebKit (Safari and a Nokia derivative).

I am not familiar with the code base used by WebKit for mobile devices,
but afaik Opera for mobile devices uses the same rendering engine and
has the same content format support as their desktop software.

>> MS and Mozilla with their ,
>> combined ~95% of the market will probably determine what will be used.
>
>Again, this is dependent on the market. In Korea, the market says you
>must use IE because of the crypto layer. In the mobile market, the
>considerations are different.

Desktop client content support will determine the format most content
will be published in. Making a different choice for the mobile segment
is not only very costly, it will deny mobile access to the majority of
web audio and video content. IMO the mobile sector will follow suit
unless there are insurmountable problems using the same format there.

>I can't speak for Nokia any more than
>Dave or any of the other Apple employees can speak for Apple, but
>shipping ogg is currently not an option.

I'm not particularly concerned with Apple's decision not to support an
open free format. As I said what players with a small market share do is
IMO irrelevant in relation to what will become the de facto standard of
publishing audio and video content on the web.

>We tabled the ogg discussion
>a while ago, this advocacy is a huge waste of electronic bits.

Agreed with regard to the criticism of Apple. Couldn't disagree more
with regard to fighting for open and free web content formats.

-- 
Spartanicus