HTML5 Video is coming to Opera 10.5. Yesterday (or technically, last year--happy new year readers!) Opera released a new alpha build containing a preview of their HTML5 Video support. There's a number of details to note, not least that this is still an early alpha...
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Member since:2007-02-17
This, though, is still a bit of an issue, and will remain one. That statement is 100% false. Any modern nVidia card can even show that to be false under Linux+X with common software (AMD as well, in Windows). I'm not sure how that hurdle will be handled, in the future (GPGPU decoder programs?).
It is not false. It used to be the case that h264 was well ahead of Theora in performance, but recent advances in Theora have seen it catch up.
This is why I specifically mentioned Theora 1.1. H264 is well ahead of Theora 1.0 or earlier, but it is only marginally different in performance to Theora 1.1.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/14/1649237/YouTube-HTML5-and-C...
Check it out for yourself here:
http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html
Same bitrate, same filesize, imperceptible difference in quality.
As for video cards playing the videos ... there are several stages in video rendering. Decoding the data stream is merely the first step. It takes perhaps two or three seconds for a CPU to decode a minutes worth of video data, so the codec decoding function is NOT the determining factor in replay performance.
Even if a given video card does not have a hardware decoder for a particular codec, once the bitstream is decoded from the codec format by the CPU, the rest of the video rendering functions can still be handed over to the video card hardware.
Edited 2010-01-03 07:41 UTC
Member since:2008-07-15
It depends on what one means by the word "performance." If you mean video quality and encoding speed, then yes I'd say Theora 1.1 and H.264 seem to be just about even. When H.264 jumps ahead though is decoding performance, and the reason is simple. There are video accelerator chips for H.264, and at the moment there are none for Theora. It's sort of a catch 22 situation: there are no accelerator chips for Theora so we won't see any major content producers use it, but until one of them does start using it there won't be any demand for accelerators. Right now, all Theora decoding is done in software by the CPU. It's not an issue on desktops or set top boxes, but on laptops and portable devices it's a mother of a battery guzzler. To be fair, so is H.264 without hardware video acceleration, but that makes little difference to content producers and providers. Currently, H.264 delivers in a huge area where Theora does not, and if I had to bet on a codec that eventually replaces H.264 over licensing I'd bet on VP8 or whatever Google ends up naming it and not Theora. I can only say one thing for certain: next year is going to be very interesting in this area.
Member since:2006-01-02
"It is not false. It used to be the case that h264 was well ahead of Theora in performance, but recent advances in Theora have seen it catch up."
It is false. Nvidia, Intel, AMD, Imagination, and Broadcom, just off the top of my head have H.264 offloading in designs with their names on them. You can give a nice GPU (and drivers, and playback software) to an Atom to get flawless 1080P H.264 playback. Theora has some Google Summer of Code entires doing it on an individual level.
It's not an easy hurdle to get over, though if a, "everyone pays for every product, and every use of that product," license system goes into effect, it may have a chance.
Edited 2010-01-04 00:54 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2006-01-02
"Theora 1.1 (previously codenamed Thusnelda) achieves virtually the same performance as h264, but it is utterly free to use by anyone, anytime, for encoding, decoding or streaming, forever."
This, though, is still a bit of an issue, and will remain one. That statement is 100% false. Any modern nVidia card can even show that to be false under Linux+X with common software (AMD as well, in Windows). I'm not sure how that hurdle will be handled, in the future (GPGPU decoder programs?).