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Google removing H.264 video support from Chrome

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:29:26 +0000

Google just announced on its Chromium blog that it will be removing support for the H.264 video codec from the Chrome web browser, in favor of supporting only its own open WebM codec (which, as we covered earlier, is based on On2 Technologies’ VP8) for HTML5 web videos using the tag.

Earlier, Microsoft, Apple, and Google had decided to support H.264 (the dominant high-definition video codec) for HTML5 web video, while Mozilla and Opera supported only Google’s WebM codec. Now, Google’s move leaves Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 and Apple’s Safari 5 as the only major browsers supporting the H.264 codec without plugins. Ironically, since the vast majority of HTML5 video on the web today is encoded using H.264, Google’s move will likely reduce the usable installed base of HTML5 video-capable browsers.

Read on for more about Google’s web video codec move.

It’s certainly a gutsy move on Google’s part. Open-source advocates point out that H.264 is not an open standard, but its patent holders have agreed to waive licensing fees for Internet video, so for the vast majority of content producers, it’s basically free today. H.264 is backed by hardware acceleration across the board, particularly in the mobile space, where non-accelerated video codecs deliver sub-par performance and eat up precious battery life. Google’s pushing for chipmakers to build WebM acceleration into their designs, but so far, its results pale in comparison to the H.264 hardware ecosystem.

Detractors point out that WebM (On2 VP8) may in many ways be an inferior codec to H.264, and even WebM’s “free” status may be in question. It’s free for now, but many (including Apple) have pointed out that there may be unknown “phantom” patents, on the basis of which patent holders could sue browser makers, web developers, and others if the codec became broadly used. These patent trolls, they say, are likely waiting for the codec to become popular, because they could then sue for significant damages.

Microsoft’s Tim Sneath responded to Google’s move with a tongue-in-cheek blog post likening WebM to the Esperanto language. Writing as the “President of the United States of Google,” he decides to change the country’s official language from English to Esperanto:

Though English plays an important role in speech today, as our goal is to enable open innovation, its further use as a form of communication in this country will be prohibited and our resources directed towards languages that are untainted by real-world usage.

This should turn out to be an interesting battle, pitting Microsoft and Apple against Google, Mozilla, and Opera. Of course, it’d be ironic if this codec fight were to stall HTML5 video’s progress as a whole in favor of content owners just sticking to Adobe’s tried-and-true Flash.

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Browser Shootout: Windows Phone 7 vs. iPhone, Android

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:14:40 +0000

A new video from Pocketnow compares browsing speed on a Windows Phone 7 prototype from LG, the iPhone 4, and Google’s Nexus One on Android. Even though the software’s not finalized yet, Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 is surprisingly competitive with the WebKit-based browsers on the iPhone and Android, beating or matching them in most tests. No Flash, Silverlight, or HTML5 A/V support yet, but the browsing experience is at least on par with the competition and at least won’t be a hindrance to the platform’s success.

While the rendering engine is a mix of IE 7 and 8, Microsoft has clearly put a lot of effort into the user experience, with silky-smooth scrolling, multi-touch zoom, and tab management. It’s a completely different animal from IE Mobile 6 on Windows Mobile 6.x (though most WinMo owners use Opera Mobile or other browsers in any case).

Video after the break.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Opera Mini browser submitted to iPhone App Store [UPDATE: Video added]

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:34:25 +0000

Opera has just submitted the iPhone version of its mobile browser, Opera Mini, to the iTunes App Store. Opera Mini uses techniques like server-side rendering (loading pages on Opera servers and relaying only the end result to the phone) to dramatically speed up mobile browsing– on an iPhone 3GS, Opera Mini loads pages up to 5 times faster faster than Apple’s Safari browser. Yet Apple is virtually guaranteed to reject the app, since it “duplicates functionality” already in the phone (a reason Apple uses to anything that might compete with its own apps on the iPhone).

So the question is why has Opera gone to such lengths to develop a version of Opera Mini for the iPhone and submitted it to the App Store if it’s just going to get rejected anyway? First, Opera genuinely wants to have its browser available on the iPhone. The company’s been building buzz around its new iPhone browser through closed-door demos, likely to build up public support which could be mobilized to put pressure on Apple if it rejects the application. Second, Opera was one of the driving forces behind the 2007 European antitrust investigation into Internet Explorer on Windows, and there’s a possibility the company is looking to launch something similar in the iPhone space.

In 2007, Opera claimed it wanted to give “consumers a genuine choice of Web browsers,” a line the company’s CEO, Jon von Tetzchner, recently repeated: ”Opera Mini is the world’s most popular mobile browser and users on the iPhone deserve a choice.” Opera also just put up a page tracking how long it’s been since it submitted the app. Certainly a nice publicity stunt– now let’s see where the company goes with this.

Update: Video added after the break.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Microsoft Demos Internet Explorer 9: Fast, HTML5, No XP Support

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:39:13 +0000

Microsoft gave a demo of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser at the MIX conference earlier today. IE9 is mainly about two things– bringing the browser up to industry standards, like HTML version 5, and improving performance all around. Its new JavaScript engine, codenamed “Chakra,” is dramatically faster than IE8, currently scoring in between Firefox and Safari, and still a bit behind Chrome and Opera, on the WebKit SunSpider benchmark. The browser still scores only 55/100 on the Acid3 test for CSS compliance, but Microsoft’s promised that will improve by the time IE9 ships.

IE9 sports dramatically improved JavaScript performance, thanks to its new "Chakra" engine

On the standards front, Microsoft has implemented a good deal of the HTML5 spec, including support for embedded video (using the H.264 codec) and audio (MP3 and AAC), scalable vector graphics (SVG2- for images that grow and shrink smoothly with different page sizes), and CSS3.

What does IE9 bring to the table that Chrome, Opera, and others don’t already have? The answer is that IE9 renders web pages using Direct2D, a new API introduced in Windows 7, and also supported in Vista and Server 2008, that provides hardware graphics acceleration for 2D rendering. This helps web pages look better (with sub-pixel text rendering) and load faster and is particularly beneficial for embedded videos.

Microsoft showed a demo of a page with two HD videos embedded using HTML5– IE9 played them both perfectly smoothly, while Chrome stuttered badly with just one video playing. The downside to this is that Direct2D doesn’t work on Windows XP, so neither will IE9. The company has made a test version available for download.