This is what's great about HTML 5. While Adobe is looking backwards and trying to claim that HTML 5 is not a viable replacement for itself, HTML 5 is actually rapidly accelerating. The H.264 licensing was a deal breaker for Mozilla, and now (hopefully) it is not. In other words, if FireFox accepts this, the criticism that Adobe published just a couple of days ago is no longer relevant.
This won't solve Mozilla's self-imposed problem at all. MPEG LA is still charging royalties on all H.264 decoders and encoders, which Mozilla refuses to pay. Also, MPEG LA reserves the right to charge webmasters as much as they want after 2016.
This only applies to the content creators, not the browsers. I think Mozilla will still have to license h.284 if they added support to Firefox as they are a commercial enterprise?
Adobe has poured alot of resources into the Flash platform over the past few years, but most of the enhancements have been around video. Most of us Flash Developers will tell you we feel a little peeved that some areas have been overlooked... I know there has been a bug I've been tracking for over two years with Adobe that stops me using the SoundMixer class in any of my apps. This added competition of HTML5 is only going to be a good thing as it will make Adobe concentrate on all areas of the platform. Thats why I get frustrated that the only discussion is always around the damn video tag!
Apple is part of the group that owns the h.264 patents. They will make money from anyone who licenses it. This is why it is important for them to stop other codecs being available on their devices. If content providers decide to use a app instead of a website to publish their content on the iPhone/iPad Apple could very easily just deduct the licensing costs from the money received from the app store (Free apps are covered as free content).
Surely in six years, Ogg Theora will be just as good as H264 and computers will have advanced to the point that converting the relevant clips will be quite efficient?
This will force the owners of H264 to either create a fair price for the codec in 2016, or they will become irrelevant like RealPlayer, etc.
Surely in six years, Ogg Theora will be just as good as H264
Theora is a generation older than H.264. There are features in H.264 that help compression that aren't in Theora, plus Theora has a few other problems (e.g. motion vectors no longer than 16 pixels). So a good H.264 encoder is always going to beat a good Theora encoder. Perhaps they'll be able to create a truly excellent Theora encoder that will mitigate the format's deficiencies as much as possible, and outperform the majority of H.264 encoders, but I wouldn't bet on it. The open-source x264 encoder is already very good, and is only going to get better. And the increasing use of H.264 for TV broadcast and Blu-ray surely means that there's going to be strong competition amongst the vendors of commercial H.264 encoders.
The passage of time won't make Theora any better or worse compared to H264. There may be some improvement in the quality of encoders, but the standard itself cannot be changed (at least, not without massive breakage).
