[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Geoffrey Sneddon]

On 4 Mar 2007, at 14:08, Maik Merten wrote:

> - MPEG4: This is most common in forms of DivX and XviD. Predecessor of
> H.264. As usual there's patent pool licensing involved. This means  
> that
> albeit XviD is open sourced it's not really free due to patent  
> licensing
> issues.

That's wrong – H.264 is MPEG4 Part 11 – it's part of the MPEG4 spec.

I think we need to look at why the MPEG standards see near universal  
support and use: as you say, parts of MPEG4 are highly efficient  
(such as H.264 and AAC), whereas alternatives of things like Theora  
aren't anywhere near efficient. Also note that patents haven't  
stopped the web in the past (see: GIF).

I really believe that this is too political, as history has shown  
people will use whatever formats can be created easily, and are well  
supported. It could be perfectly possible that anything wanting to  
implement the spec is put off by needing to support a single format  
that (almost) nobody uses.


- Geoffrey Sneddon