Ogg Theora is an excellent choice because it is not patent-encumbered and has good metadata support (even if search engines and local indexers like Spotlight neglect that metadata for now).
However, the Ogg container could just as well contain Dirac and in my view the BBC is missing a major opportunity for goodwill by not promoting Dirac. The shortcut to this is to talk with Adobe; they quietly added Speex support to Flash 10 after all, and with Dirac support in Flash, uptake would develop very quickly. H.264/AAC uptake has been hampered by Microsoft's refusal to support it these past six years; they seem to have deathly feared the competition with Windows Media. They support it in the XBox though, and in Windows 7 which may be out this year after all. Opera doesn't need licences for Ogg Theora, Håkon Wium Lie their CTO told me a year and a half ago they vastly prefer unencumbered web standards. He repeated this when I saw him last week at a briefing on the Microsoft browser tying case. Opera is probably another opportunity to promote Dirac in mobile. There is an Ogg Theora codec pack for Windows Media Player, but I believe it cannot be pushed out silently and requires administrative rights. Sean On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 2:47 AM, Tom Fitzhenry<t...@tom-fitzhenry.me.uk> wrote: > Hey guys, > > Are there any plans on supporting HTML 5's <video> tag for iPlayer? > > I realise there are rights issues with some programmes and that rights > holders might have problems with non-DRM solutions, but presumably there > are some programmes which the BBC have full rights to. > > Supporting the <video> tag raises the question of which codec to use, > which is difficult to answer because there is no codec that every > vaguely popular browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome) supports or > plans to support in the near future. > > IE has been silent so far (though there are DirectShow filters for Ogg > Theora/Vorbis.[0]). > Firefox 3.5 will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis (and cannot support H.264/AAC > because of patent issues).[1] > Safari will support H.264/AAC (Ogg Theora/Vorbis plugins for Quicktime > exist[2]).[3] > Opera will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis (I don't know if they plan to > purchase licenses for its users.)[4] > Chrome will support Ogg Theora/Vorbis and H.264/AAC.[5] > > I think users of alternative browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome), rather > than non-alternative browsers would most appreciate <video> to Flash. > Also, H.264/AAC cannot be supported in browsers without huge financial > backing (because of patent issues), where as Ogg Theora/Vorbis is > believed to be patent-free. > > As such, to benefit most people, I think using Ogg Theora/Vorbis would > be the best choice. > > Regards, > Tom Fitzhenry > > PS. I don't know if this is the right place to post this. I couldn't > find a better place though. > > 0. http://www.xiph.org/dshow/ > 1. https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_audio_and_video_in_Firefox > 2. http://xiph.org/quicktime/ > 3. http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/ > 4. http://labs.opera.com/news/2008/11/25/ > 5. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10250958-2.html > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ > - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
