[whatwg] H.264-in-<video> vs plugin APIs

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Chris DiBona<cdibona at gmail.com> wrote:
> Comparing Daily Motion to Youtube is disingenuous. If yt were to
> switch to theora and maintain even a semblance of the current youtube
> quality it would take up most available bandwidth across the internet.
[snip]

I'm not sure what mixture of misinformation and hyperbole inspired
this remark, but I believe that it is misleading and to leave it stand
without comment would be a disservice to this working group.

I have prepared a detailed response:
http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html


I understand that the selection and implementation of video,
especially at the scale of YouTube, is worlds apart from such a
simplistic comparison. But you didn't claim that Theora support would
be inconvenient, that it would require yet-unjustified expenditure, or
that the total cost would simply be somewhat higher than the H.264
solution. You basically claimed that Theora on YouTube would destroy
the internet.  I'd consider that too silly to respond to if I didn't
know that many would take it as the literal truth.

Even though I wish Google were doing more to promote open video, I
appreciate all that it has done so far.  I hope that I'll soon be able
to add a retraction or amendment of that claim to the list.


Cheers,
Greg Maxwell