There’s an incredible amount of momentum behind Google’s WebM Project. Opera, Mozilla, and of course Google will all include it in their browsers by default, meaning about 35% of web users will be able to use it with a minimal amount of fuss. On top of that, Microsoft has changed its previously announced plans to make HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9 H264-only to include VP8 as well. Only Apple’s opinion was unclear – until now.
A reader from The Register emailed Steve Jobs, asking him what Apple thinks of WebM. The email was clear and to the point: “What did you make of the recent VP8 announcement?” Steve Jobs indeed responded – with a URL. This one, to be exact, pointing to Jason Garrett-Glaser’s analysis of WebM/VP8. Garrett-Glaser is one of the main x264 developers.
In his analysis, Garrett-Glaser appears to be quite negative about VP8 and WebM. “Overall, VP8 appears to be significantly weaker than H.264 compression-wise,” he concludes, “The primary weaknesses mentioned above are the lack of proper adaptive quantization, lack of B-frames, lack of an 8×8 transform, and non-adaptive loop filter. With this in mind, I expect VP8 to be more comparable to VC-1 or H.264 Baseline Profile than with H.264. Of course, this is still significantly better than Theora, and in my tests it beats Dirac quite handily as well.”
“VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264,” Garrett-Glaser continues, “A pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be ‘H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder’. Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today’s overly litigious day and age.”
His analysis, no matter how often it has been quoted around the web, has not been accepted without question. Gregory Maxwell explains that while the analysis itself isn’t unfair, we “do need to understand it for what it is”. He is backed up by Opera’s Haavard.
“He’s comparing a very raw, hardly out of development, set of tools to his own project – which is the most sophisticated and mature video encoder in existence,” Maxwell explains, “x264 contains a multitude of pure encoder side techniques which can substantially improve quality and which could be equally applied to VP8. For an example of the kinds of pure encoder side improvements available, take a look at the most recent improvements to Theora.”
“VP8 is more computationally complex than Theora, but roughly comparable to H.264 baseline,” Maxwell continues, “And it compares pretty favourably with H.264 baseline, even without an encoder that doesn’t suck. This is all pretty good news.”
As for the patent situation, Maxwell disagrees sharply with Garrett-Glaser. “Simply being similar to something doesn’t imply patent infringement, Jason is talking out of his rear on that point,” he states, “He has no particular expertise with patents, and even fairly little knowledge of the specific H.264 patents as his project ignores them entirely.”
Since the codec has only been opened up yesterday, I’m sure there’s still a lot of discussion to come on this subject. I eagerly await a more unbiased analysis of VP8 and WebM, since the x264 developers are hardly impartial in this matter; they are in the middle of an effort to re-license x264 so they can start charging money for it. In other words, Google is a competitor here.
At least WebM and VP8 is backed by a large group of major companies, including Google, NVIDIA, ARM, AMD, and a whole boatload of others.
I also sent an email to Steve Jobs, asking him if Apple is going to add support for WebM to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. I don’t expect an answer, obviously, but hey, stranger things have happened.
Nonono. VP8 proponents tell us since two years (VP8 was releases back then) that it blows the entire h.264 standard out of the water.
Now a mere name change and a quality-unaffecting container switch to the proven and robust Matroska format makes VP8 “very raw, hardly out of development” and excuses for rather mediocre performance against h.264???
Make up your mind.
Edited 2010-05-20 23:49 UTC
…compared to H264, it’s new. This isn’t rocket science.
But it was still supposed to be twice as good as h.264 at half the bandwidth at conception 2 years ago. On2 wasn’t saying, “In a decade, VP8 will be twice as good as h.264 at half the bandwidth was last decade.” That doesn’t make for good marketing.
Well, it isn’t. Who cares, anyway? I don’t mind if it’s a bit worse if it’s open. We were willing to use Theora instead of H.264, and we are going to ditch VP8?
Keep in mind that Google is going to invest insane amounts of money on this and that long-term it may even develop entirely new codec techniques.
So the public, which doesn’t give a fig about “open source”, is forced to settle for an inferior codec for the sake of a small minority’s ideology?
It’s fine for you to choose OSS stuff even if it’s inferior. My beef is that that choice is being shoved down the public’s throat as well. So much for letting competition allow the better technology to win. Advancind a group’s ideology trumps such quaint notions, I guess.
It turns out it’s the public who doesn’t give a fig about inferior codecs. It’s the geeks who care about that.
Molly, you are seriously not up to date.
Was HTML and CSS “forced” on you? No, they are just standards. The web needs free and open standards as a foundation.
Standards aren’t “forced down the public’s throat”. The public doesn’t make browsers or sites.
Yes, a free and open codec is needed for HTML5. A closed codec will damage the market like IE6 damaged the market.
VP8 is — as the name suggests — On2’s 8th generation codec. Its first generation (under the name TrueMotion-S) was released 15 years ago and supposedly development started “in the early 1990’s”. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueMotion
You’d expect that On2 learned to program a competitive codec during that time frame.
Or do those almost 20 years still qualify as “very raw, hardly out of development”?
obvious troll. do you think h264 has no previous codecs? that’s right h263. thats right all the previous too.
VP8 has never been seen outside on2 before this week and claims were on2 claims alone.
The codec does better than h264 baseline and worse than main and high profile (which are a good step up)
even x264 author claims that
additionally x264 has had a tremendous work done compared to VP8.
so.. VP8 isn’t bad really. in fact, it’s pretty good.
From the analysis you linked:
Of course this refers to the encoder and not the spec, but the spec has to predate the encoder (or at least parts of it). Certainly not “very raw, hardly out of development”.
VP8 is older than H264! It has rather shitty specs with too many “look the code” style marks. When Theora came it was pretty much crap and not until lot of development it has become quite good but you can’t turn shit to diamonds in decade.
Main reason why Microsoft isn’t including VP8 on Windows or IE is due patent threat and it’s real. You seriously think that closed source spec codec made by few coders is completely unique and that they never perhaps looked competition and asked “hmm that looks nice let’s use it ourself”?
VP8 is not older than H264. It’s almost as old, but the fact is that it is not as mature because H264 has had a lot more eyeballs and resources poured into it.
Now VP8 is out in the open, which means that it too will benefit from more eyeballs and resources.
It isn’t the age, but the maturity. VP8 is simply not as mature. Yet.
Really? When and where?
No, VP8 is only out there now, which means that there’s a lot of development remaining. A lot of improvements can be made because it hasn’t been optimized yet.
And the performance is not mediocre. It’s actually better than H.264 baseline, which is what matters today.
Seriously, how about reading the damn article before whining?
The mind is made up already. You are just being dishonest and misrepresenting people’s position.
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/985/youtubevergleich.png
Top: WebM youtube video with the Opera nightly build.
Bottom: h264 youtube video with flash in firefox.
Platform: Win 7 64bits
Filesize: 35407kbyte for flash, 35183kbyte for webm.
See http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377#comment-4433
And all is said on *true* WebM quality.
-WebM +VP8 =p
See? Now we can debate, with hard FACTS such as these great screenshots. Every h264/x264 proponent keeps telling people WebM sucks, but ALL the evidence so far points to the contrary…my, my…perhaps a little scared, are we? 😛
I wouldn’t be surprised; people sometimes mark themselves up as rational and reasonable people but ignore that emotions drive people behaviour where a choice is made then rationalising that choice comes secondary. They have a vested interest in x264 because they’ve poured their heart and soul into the project. That being said, they shouldn’t need to view it as a threat but instead an opportunity to as end users to have more choice and as developers to learn from what Google and friends will do to VP8 to improve it for the long term.
In the end, with every other browser vendor backing it, it won’t matter how many hissy fits His Steveness wants to throw. If every other vendor backs it, Apple will either have to do the same or they’ll lose what little marketshare they have. This is why Microsoft backed it, they had no real choice. As goes Youtube, so go the browser vendors.
It doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to be good enough, and it is. Good enough + everyone else backing it == Apple in a corner. Mmmm, where’s my popcorn and beer? I’m going to enjoy this.
Dude, get a reality check.
Microsoft said that IE9 will play VP8 if a codec for it is installed. MS did not say that VP8 will be shipped with IE9.
This is exactly the same approach Apple takes since years with Safari: Safari plays back everything inside the HTML5 video tag as long as a codec for it is installed.
It’s not the same situation. Previously Microsoft had stated that only H.264 would be supported. System video codecs for other formats (like VC-1 and Theora) would not be used even if installed. This is a prudent posture since not all of these codecs have been screened to the same level for security.
Now Microsoft is offering another option provided you bring the codec yourself. Of course we can expect Google to be pushing the WebM codecs on as many computers as possible using Chrome and their other software.
That’s what sane people said to Mozilla since years: Use the system’s media framework, but install the Ogg’s family of codecs along with Firefox.
What a load of bull crap; Microsoft said that they wouldn’t be supporting more than h264 but other codecs could be supported via the Windows Media Player activeX plugin. The situation hasn’t changed on iota except for people like you, clueless as to the situation, crowing about the supposed change by the prodigal son named Microsoft.
I agree. But this is a clear instance of a company using its monopoly power to push a codec that isn’t as good as the already accepted standard. Hmmm….
When did ‘we’ accept that standard? I must have missed that vote. Hasn’t this whole debate of late been because alot of people does not accept h.264 to be the web standard?
Maybe you didn’t accept H.264 as the standard (nor did I, nor did the general public), but the industry had*, until Google used it’s monopoly power to change that.
In theory, a patent holder in the H.264 patent pool (I don’t refer to Microsoft or Apple, but one of the many others in that patent pool) could sue Google for abusing its monopoly in the web video market to stamp out usage of H.264 on the web, thus denying that patent holder the income it would otherwise have received. I don’t support that, but I could see someone making that case in theory.
If VP8 were clearly superior, that would be one thing. But apparently H.264 is superior, yet is being denied its rightful place in the market due to Google’s monopoly power. I don’t see how anyone could really deny that that’s what’s happenning here.
* Generally speaking, H.264 had been accepted by Flash (I think Flash’s HD vids are H.264), the professional content creation industry (because it has DRM support), Apple (which controls the mobile space), Blu Ray (H.264 is one of the three standard Blu Ray codecs (along with MPEG2 and VC-1), so one could use the same tools to encode a Blu Ray video and a web video), Silverlight (which uses VC-1 and H.264 as both are suitable to be packaged for adaptive streaming and have DRM support), etc. As I said above, the public didn’t really choose H.264 (they don’t even know what a codec is, let alone H.264 specifically), but lots of industry was already using H.264.
Edited 2010-05-23 00:27 UTC
Err, no. The standard we are talking about is HTML5, in particular the video tag within HTML5, and the codec to be used for that video.
Like most web standards, HTML5 is a W3C standard.
W3C policy is that unless there is absolutely no alternative, then only royalty-free technologies will be specified by W3C standards.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/
In the case of the HTML5 specification, in line with their policy, W3C originally stipulated Theora as the video codec. At the time, Theora was appreciably inferior to H.264, and there was sufficient dissent that W3C had to remove Theora from the HTML5 specification because of this lack of consensus.
However, Theora was NOT replaced by H.264. Currently, the HTML5 specification makes no recommendation about the video codec to be used. So H.264 was never in the HTML5 standard. It still isn’t.
Hardly. H.264 doesn’t meet the primary policy requirement of a W3C standard, in that it is not royalty-free.
I’ll deny it, most definitely.
H.264 isn’t superior to VP8, BTW.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23342/First_Look_VP8_vs_H264
They were using it (perhaps short-sightedly enjoying the royalty amnesty period the MPEG LA had allowed for H.264), but it wasn’t the standard. Until MPEG LA promise that it can be used royalty-free by all parties forever more (as Google have recently declared for VP8), then H.264 isn’t even eligible as the web video codec standard.
Edited 2010-05-23 10:52 UTC
Monopolies aren’t automatically bad, especially in cases like this where the “monopoly” (you are probably referring to YouTube) is used to create a free and open standard, which benefits the entire market.
Monopoly is only abused when it’s to the detriment of the market. Google’s use of its monopoly in this case is clearly beneficial for the market as whole.
I deny that. VP8 is better than H.264 baseline, which is all that matters (because baseline is the only thing all those devices out there support).
And even if it wasn’t, Google has not abused its monopoly power. Instead, it has used it to strengthen free and open standards. The very opposite of abuse.
There is no evidence to suggest that VP8 isn’t as good as H.264 (as used by some on the web). Despite its use on the web, H.264 is NOT the standard for the video codec for use on the web. (W3C originally proposed Theora, Apple refused to accept that, Microsoft had nothing to say on the matter, and so right now there is no standard codec for the web).
Edited 2010-05-21 05:36 UTC
Yes there is. It’s linked from the article.
X264 in hq mode and baseline:
http://doom10.org/compare/x264.png
http://doom10.org/compare/x264baseline.png
VP8:
http://doom10.org/compare/vp8.png
That’s not to say that it cannot be improved, of course.
My major concern is that the codec seems to be very poorly specced.
Accepted by who? Certainly not by Firefox or any of the major players in the Free Software/Open Source World, and quite frankly that’s the only thing that really matters here.
Nobody here really cares what Apple does or doesn’t do concerning the piece-of-shit called the Ipad.
Same concerning Microsoft and their crap.
Yeah, isn’t it disgusting how Apple is pushing for H264 instead of the standard, open VP8. That’s what you mean, right?
Bah, Steve’s response is hardly an opinion… Linking someone to a 3rd party review of the codec doesn’t say much other than: “We saw this review.”
What it does suggest is that Apple is actually interested in how it stacks up against h.264 – probably before they will make any real public statements about it.
While people seem to be commenting on the quality aspect of the link that Steve Jobs linked to, this may be missing the bigger menace.
It may be more a veiled threat about patents which the blog suggested that VP8 could potentially infringe.
I would love to see a good quality comparison between the codece though – kind of like the theora “improvements” that monty from Xiph did to show the improvements.
Edited 2010-05-21 00:28 UTC
Didn’t you get the memo? When Google releases the source code to a modified H264 Baseline codec, it does not infringe patents, because a.) the codec has a different name and b.) Google possesses magical fairy dust that makes all patent claims disappear. As a side result, btw, x264 is now also free of any patents.
I dont know if you have any clue what you are talking about, but if you do – that is simply a completely untrue statement. While some aspects of VP8 do have some similarities to h.264 baseline (as pointed out in the technical analysis) there are other things it does completely differently. Even the similar parts appear to be different enough to avoid patent issues – Google did study this thing before pulling the trigger…
VP8 is VP7 with some refinements. Before that you had VP6, VP5, VP4, VP3, etc. and so on. The fact that this is the last in a line of codecs that stretches back FAR before h.264 came into existence is relevent, and the fact that MPEG-LA has never attempted to collect royalties on any of On2’s previous work is going to work against them to at least some degree if they try to litigate now…
Granted patent law is not like trademarks, but ignoring something for this long and then suddenly giving a shit is not going to work in their favor.
You don’t know for a fact that MPEG LA have ignored the On2 lineage of codecs. It may simply be the case that MPEG LA have scrutinised the whole series of On2’s codecs, and have found no infringements via which to attack (just as Google has done now).
Edited 2010-05-21 01:27 UTC
I find that _highly_ doubtful since they claim to be putting together a patent pool in an attempt to license/litigate VP8 as we speak (there is a link to the article with the quote from MPEG-LA in this thread).
So either they know there are no patent issues and they are lying in an attempt to spread FUD, or they do think there are patent issues and have simply not bothered to pursue them because On2 wasn’t a particularly wealthy target. Either way they are just posturing assholes.
Edited 2010-05-21 02:07 UTC
The only part that is not doubtful is that Google have done a thorough patent search viz a via VP8, and they believe it to be not infringing of any other patents, and they have stated this position, and indeed they only released VP8 as open source and royalty-free because they believe it to be not infringing.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?425732
Edited 2010-05-21 02:22 UTC
Again, Microsoft said the exact same thing about VC-1; where is VC-1 now? Oh, that’s right: it’s an MPEGLA patent pool that has a small fraction of contributions from Microsoft and is hardly indistinguishable from the main MPEG-4 and AVC patents but for a couple of algorithms.
Why would any company say anything but, “We reviewed it and are confident it is all ours”?
Think about this for a second.
1. Microsoft release VC1 and claim it to be patent free. Good PR.
2. Microsoft include VC1 in Silverlight.
3. A short while later, a patent troll pops out of the woodwork, and sues Microsoft.
4. Microsoft immediately caves without a fight, and pays money to the patent troll.
5. Microsoft say sorry everyone, but in order to use VC1 you are going to have to get a licensed binary from us. No independent implementations allowed.
6. Microsoft/Novell include a provision in Moonlight so that Linux systems running Moonlight now download a binary dependency on Microsoft.
7. Silverlight/Moonlight is constrained to run only on x86 systems (bad luck, ARM).
All done while Microsoft appear (PR-wise) to be trying to do the right thing.
Quite neat, really. A pity (from a Microsoft POV) that it didn’t work.
What is your point besides making mine?
It is my contention that Google wins under all 3 scenarios: webm is not patent-encumbered and kills off all other formats for web video, h.264 remains the dominant format after several year of confusion and good PR thrown Google’ way for trying to come up with an open codec but ultimately failing, and/or VP8 becomes like VC-1, a minor format not too distinguished from other MPEGLA formats, still requiring paid licenses, still patent encumbered but a viable alternative for some instances. Again, of course, Google will say they’ve done a thorough review and it’s not patent-encumbered. They are trying to convince zealots who will latch onto anything for however long that they are presenting them a salvation.
But how does that prove that VP8 isn’t patent-encumbered?
MPEG LA is an organisation that “pooled” all of the patents that they believed were needed to make the best video codec. They assembled everything together, and ended up with a long list of patents, collected from these companies:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
According to MPEG LA, this covers all patentable methods in H.264.
On2 is not on this list.
For years On2 researched, designed and patented a series of video codecs.
H.264 doesn’t use any of it, according to MPEG LA’s own actions.
If Google’s warning regarding opening patents for VP8 is no threat to MPEG LA, then by inference MPEG LA don’t have any patents that cover On2 technologies.
You do not make any sense. Companies have to bring their patents forward to MPEGLA. Just because ON2 chose a path of maintaining private codecs and licensing them individually (and therefore is not a member of MPEGLA) does not mean that nothing ON2 ever created does not infringe on mpeg patents.
Nope. I think you will find that MPEG LA actively scouted and sought out any company who held a relevant patent to join the MPEG LA patent pool.
This way, MPEG LA seeks to be in a position to declare to customers that “there can be no patent out there that applies to h.264. We have got everything that applies under our umbrella. You are safe from attack from patent trolls if you use H.264, since we have everything covered that H.264 uses”.
Since MPEG LA never sought to include On2’s patents, nor did they ever sue On2, then the flip side to this very same coin is that all of the patents in the H.264 patent pool do not apply to On2 patented technologies.
Edited 2010-05-21 05:50 UTC
No, you are wrong and you are illogical. MPEGLA does not and cannot force anyone to pool their patents which does not want to. Patent pools aim to provide a safe environment from litigation by guaranteeing the greatest licensing return by having the broadest market (ideally becoming standards) which encourages companies to willing participate. By reaching a broader market (even only having a small piece of a format) is generally more profitable than trying to individually peddle your proprietary and closed tech. They further guarantee against litigation by indemnifying licensees. Certainly, from time to time, it may be clear that there is a patent and the patent holder does not want to participate — in which case, they may try to write around that patent. But in general, patent pools work — despite patent haters hatred of them.
Microsoft is a perfect example. Because they wanted to own and control their own formats, they refused to partake. Ultimately, they did join (in part to learn how to write a decent codec). They then submitted their patents to the pool. Prior to their joining, the patents still existed, they were still utilized by Microsoft, but MPEGLA did not provide a license for those patents. Furthermore, Microsoft did say VC-1 was entirely theirs. It was later discovered to not be the case. How can you not understand that the few VC-1 patents actually owned by Microsoft were not controlled by MPEGLA but VC-1 clearly violated most MPEGLA patents which forced it into the fold when MSFT tried to standardize it? Do you not see the analogy?
Moreover, just because there are no ON2 patents in MPEG’s pools does NOT mean there cannot be MPEG patents used in ON2 tech. This is simple logic. Very simple scenario: in this corner I have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. In another corner I have I and a copy of B. I is not in the first corner, but B is, and the second corner contains a copy of it. Again, I is not in corner #1, but B from corner #1 is in corner #2. See how this works yet? Again, I refer you to the real world MSFT example above. If you are going to insist on arguing that because ON2 is not a member of MPEGLA, there is no way that ON2 can violate an MPEG patent, there should be a clause in every open license that you are too dim to use open source code. Really. I apologize, but I can’t avoid the insult.
Edited 2010-05-21 06:32 UTC
Sigh!
You effectively have this situation:
Google: “We did a thorough patent search, and we are confident that there are no patents which threaten VP8”.
MPEG LA: “We are confident that if you use H.264 and license it from us, you are safe from threats from other patent holders, because we hold patent coverage for everything patentable that H.264 requires”.
USPTO: “In order to be granted a patent, your invention must be new.”
The MPEG LA H.264 patent pool includes no On2 patents.
I.E: The USPTO, Google and MPEG LA all agree, there is no patent overlap between H.264 and VP8.
The fact that you would like there to be an overlap has no bearing on this situation.
Edited 2010-05-21 06:37 UTC
Again, I don’t have to believe Google.
Again, MPEGLA does not guarantee they have scoured the universe for patents. They specifically indemnify licensees against the threat of potential lawsuits down the road due to patents they do not know about. You completely misunderstand or have done nothing to understand how the patent pool works at all.
And again, even if MPEGLA did claim its patent pool was complete and exhaustive and no ON2 patents were in it, that does not prevent ON2 from having violated one of the MPEG patents. I do not comprehend how you can be so dense as to not comprehend this logic. Especially when I have cited a specific, real word case in which it occurred: Microsoft and VC-1.
I am designing a new graphics card, so I arrange for the CPU to store information in a “video” RAM buffer, arrange for that buffer to be repeatedly re-read by the video card circuitry, decode the buffer contents, apply it to a DAC, modulate a signal, use the result as a raster for a CRT (or LCD).
Patentable idea? No, this same method has been in use for well over 40 years now.
Nearly every new graphics card still uses this idea. Can ATI sue nvidia? No. Sorry. Neither can nvidia sue ATI. Not everything is patentable (thank goodness).
So, there will be a good deal of common methods used between VP8 and H.264, but all of those should not be patentable (just like the buffer/DAC/video raster idea outlined above is not patentable through its lack of novelty).
Google, MPEG LA and USPTO all agree that of the patented methods within H.264 and VP8, there is no overlap between the two.
Why is this so hard for you to accept?
Edited 2010-05-21 07:03 UTC
I have no idea what you mean by it didn’t work, because what you write is complete nonsense, I assume it is a hypothetical. What happened was Microsoft did successfully stall MPEG-4/AVC adoption for a couple of years while claiming they had a superior codec that would be an industry standard that was far, far, far cheaper than the evil MPEGLA alternative. They put it up for standardization which required a patent review, it was found to be 90% indistinguishable from MPEG-4/AVC, came under the auspices of MPEGLA, has similar licensing terms to MPEG-4, and has very niche value because it beats MPEG in some cases but only a very small subset of circumstances. It was a successful stalling tactic and one that once it was over has been forgotten for what a sham it was. So depending on your perspective, it absolutely did work. And ultimately, we are still left with MPEGLA licenses, aren’t we? So….
I agree. But they didn’t take the last step off the ledge and indemnify their users. That tells me they are at the very least hedging their bets a wee bit.
I think Google is taking a page from the Bush administration – they are attempting to create a “coalition of the willing” so to speak
Hope it works out better for them. Anyway, between Google and everyone else who has thrown in with them so far, they may have enough clout in silicon valley to simply make MPEG-LA shut up and leave them alone, or at least scare the companies who actually hold the patents into careful consideration before setting off the nuke that a patent litigation case over this would be.
In a nutshell I would wager Google is about 95% confident they can defend VP8 in patent litigation, but if it comes to that they are making it very clear that their will be hell to pay for going down that road…
Well none of the other players are offering indemnification either. If you get a license from the MPEG-LA that does not protect you from someone else who believes he has patents which cover h264 so you’re not any safer than going with VP8. That’s something everyone is constantly ignoring.
Good point.
Moreover, they created a new license where the only new provision was: if you engage in patent litigation against VP8, the license is no longer valid because they are very confident it is free of patents. Riiiiighht.
I think you may have missed the gist of this. The open license from Google to use the patents covering VP8 becomes no longer valid for the party who engaged in the patent litigation against VP8.
Therefore, if MPEG LA engage in patent litigation against VP8, then no-one using H.264 (or indeed any MPEG LA product) after that point will be licensed any longer to use any method of H.264 that happens to be covered by any ex-On2 (now Google) patent.
Edited 2010-05-21 02:55 UTC
Again, repeating me is not helping your argument. I understand perfectly that is what it means. However, if they are so confident that it is not patent-encumbered why are they creating a new open license with the sole purpose of trying to thwart a patent litigation if they are so confident no patent litigation can hold up?
Are you really that dense? That provision is a WARNING. The only entity on earth that would likely have the slightest interest in pursuing patent litigation against VP8 is MPEG-LA. That provision is there just for them, a nice personal message. It is irrelevant to every other person/business on earth.
Google has patents too, lots of them. The other companies throwing in with Google on this have patents, lots of them. AMD, ARM, Nvidia, Broadcom, etc., all of them have released statements claiming support for WebM – they are all dated 5/19/2010 and they were certainly not simply passing remarks. That was an orchestrated message.
The companies that own the patents in the MPEG-LA patent pool (Samsung, Apple, MS, etc.) have to you know, do business with some of these companies… Google is making it clear that if MPEG-LA tries to make things difficult for them they are going to make things difficult right back.
It is just as likely that h.264 violates one of On2’s patents as it is likely that VP8 violates one of MPEG-LA’s. Mexican stand-off, that is what that clause is for.
No sh!t, again, how does this prove it’s not patent encumbered? It shows they are very, very, very afraid of a patent fight. You can call it a warning, but you don’t go around warning people that are no threat to you that you are no threat to them. That is not a warning. You also don’t warn people that think they have the rights to a format that you will take away their rights. How does that scare anyone? Oh no, Fraunhofer, Dolby, Fujitsu, Daewoo, LG, Hitachi, Microsoft, NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Scientific Atlantic, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, Ericsson, Toshiba, Victor — everyone of the companies crucial to the development of video formats — you can’t use a format that you aren’t endorsing and aren’t pledging to use even though you think (and probably do) own most of it! Oooh, scary warning. So intimidating that out of the hundreds of open licenses in existence no one has ever used such a clause before.
See here.
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?425777
Ditto for your reply. If Google’s warning regarding opening patents for VP8 is no threat to MPEG LA, then by inference MPEG LA don’t have any patents that cover On2 technologies.
Edited 2010-05-21 04:56 UTC
You need a lesson in inference in logic. Just because Google would like to threaten others into believing that they don’t have valid patents doesn’t mean there is no patented technology owned by others in ON2 tech.
You need a lesson in logic.
For years On2 were designing and patenting codecs, and during the same period MPEG LA were actively gathering together a comprehensive patent pool also for video codecs. MPEG LA did not seek to put On2’s patents in its pool. MPEG LA did not sue On2 over any technology.
Hmmmm.
Therefore, according to MPEG LA themselves, who claim that their pool makes H.264 patent-proof, nothing in H.264 has anything to do with On2 patented technologies. According to MPEG LA, they do not require On2 patented technologies. Therefore, nothing in the h.264 patent pool has anything to do with On2 patented video codec technologies … according to MPEG LA themselves.
It doesn’t. Never said it did. What exactly would prove that? I hope it isn’t, and I’m sure Google does as well, and I’m sure they did a lot of research before deciding to release it. But you can’t prove it – only time will tell.
GPL v3 Section 10
…and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it.
Apache License Section 3
If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Mozilla Public License Section 8
…if You initiate litigation by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declatory judgment actions) against Initial Developer or a Contributor (the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You file such action is referred to as “Participant”) alleging that…
Did you even look before making such a completely stupid statement?
Edited 2010-05-21 08:34 UTC
“What does this license let me do?
Like most BSD-style licenses, this license allows you to use the VP8 code with a minimum of restrictions on your use. You can use the code in proprietary software as well as open source software. The main difference between the standard BSD license and the VP8 license is that this license grants patent rights, and terminates if patent litigation is filed alleging infringement of the code.
…
Why didn’t you use the Apache license?
The Apache license is somewhat similar in effect to this license. The main reason it was not used is that filing patent litigation against someone using the Apache 2 license only terminates patent rights granted under the license. Whoever filed the litigation would still be able to use the software they are suing over and still be in compliance with the license. This license, however, terminates all rights when patent litigation is filed. Rather than modify the Apache license to meet our needs, which would probably lead to significant confusion, we went with the simpler approach of a BSD style license + patent provision.”
From Google’s own webm FAQ:
http://www.webmproject.org/about/faq/
Google thinks their patent litigation clause is unique.
By the way, even if MPEGLA did file a patent litigation suit and lost, wouldn’t that instantly kill the future of webm? The format is being created to placate the 5% of the universe ideologically obsessed with free and open, but Google is willing to cut off 95% of the desktop Operating System market and 60% of the manufacturers who make chips that use hardware to accelerate encoding/decoding? Yeah, that’s a good way of guaranteeing that the format remains vibrant and freely available for all to use. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a move of utter desperation to fend off a move they know is coming.
If MPEG LA did file a patent litigation suit and lost, that would ensure the future of webm, as there then would be no other viable choice other thatn webm and Theora.
No viable choice if your an ideological zealot, but what about the fact that the vast majority of chips that encode and decode video and 95% of desktop OSes and 25% of mobile devices wouldn’t be able to use one choice and the other choice is completely inferior crap?
The only ideological zealot here seems to be you.
The fact is that without free and open standards, the internet wouldn’t even exist.
And cutting off many of the biggest players in video technology is free and open?
P.S. I don’t think myself a zealot at all. I have no problem with open source. In this case, I am only arguing that it is likely that ON2 did violate MPEG patents and if they did, it is a big problem.
Edited 2010-05-21 07:06 UTC
No one is cut off. For example, Samsung does Android phones. All Android phones will support WebM.
Samsung is a licensor of MPEGLA. If MPEGLA pursues their legal right to determine if ON2 misused their patents, Samsung is in fact cut off according to Google’s current webm license.
You are assuming that Samsung has any authority over the MPEG-LA, and that it represents Samsung.
Samsung has granted MPEGLA authority over its MPEG patents to act in its interest, yes. It may be helpful if you do some research.
Samsung has added its patents to a pool to avoid litigation, that’s all.
No, it has authorized MPEGLA to represent it with regard to its MPEG patents. That was the question you asked and the one I answered. Hand waving and saying, “Well, well, that don’t mean nothing, it’s just a patent pool” doesn’t change the mechanics and reality of Samsung’s involvement in MPEGLA.
Funny how Samsung wasn’t a frontline supporter of webm, huh?
Why is that funny? They aren’t going to get everyone in the industry right away.
Wow. That was a sarcastic funny. You know: not a single MPEGLA licensor was named as a partner even though they represent the cream of the crop of video technology, make significant video encoding/decoding software, chips for video encoding, etc… Several of them even being major Google partners in other initiatives… choosing not to support something that we are supposed to believe will ultimately be universally adopted and optimized to be better than the bell weather standard of the last half decade.
Edited 2010-05-21 07:24 UTC
You are making too many useless assumptions. Just wait and see.
The web wouldn’t even exist without free and open. But hey, feel free to get the fuck off the internet which you hate so much, since you clearly think free and open is evil.
They already have AMD, ARM and Qualcomm, among others. What makes you think they won’t get anyone else?
You really need to stop whining…
I have no opposition to free and open. Likewise, I don’t insist upon it.
Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic, Apple, and Microsoft would be banned from using the format. It wouldn’t matter who else they could get to license it. (ARM and AMD are far less significant than you think — it’s good that these chips can support encoding/decoding, but 9 out of 10 times, in real world situations, you want to offload the processing to a GPU, dedicated encoder, or some other chip. Moreover, most of these companies are willing to support the new codec because they are already licensing other codecs and patents — the cost is inconsequential to them. Hell, they are probably the ones asking MPEGLA for indemnification.)
I love when open advocates advocate cutting off huge portions of the market out of spite.
Free and open is the cornerstone of the internet/web.
None of those you mention would be “banned from using the format”.
If they sued Google to determine if their patents are being used improperly (which is their legal right), they would be according to Google’s license.
Very, very good incentive for Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic, Apple, and Microsoft to all insist that MPEG LA does not sue Google over VP8.
And also very good reason to believe that in fact ON2’s VP8 does include MPEG patents and the format will be irrelevant in short order.
Not at all.
But of course, shills will keep spreading FUD.
Not at all.
1. USPTO is supposed to only award patents for new inventions.
2. MPEG LA and On2 were both designing video codecs over the same period.
3. MPEG LA and On2 were both applying for patents on their “invented” methods, some of which they were granted, other applications were denied.
4. For each denial, USPTO would offer a reason.
5. If the reason for denial was: “prior art, not new” or “too obvious” … then that method can still be used. No-one can patent it. There are a huge array of methods that fall into this category.
6. If the reason for denial was: “another patent already granted”, then this method is clearly to be avoided. Use another method instead to achieve the same (desired) effect.
7. If the patent application was granted, then that method can obviously be used. You are now the patent owner.
8. Back to point 5: if another patent WAS granted later to another party for such a method, then your earlier patent submission that was denied can be used as evidence of prior art. Here, the USPTO goofed, and the later patent is invalidated.
The end result: both MPEG LA and On2 each end up with a codec that does not infringe on the other’s patents.
Edited 2010-05-21 10:05 UTC
Adobe supports it.
Microsoft is currently agnostic (95% of the OS market not being cut off, right there).
They have support from ARM, nVidia, and AMD, along with most makers of smart phone CPUs.
So, who are the 60% and 95% being cut off?
Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung (they make a huge percentage of encoder chips) are enough. You don’t use ARM chips to decode video if it is your primary CPU.
Edited 2010-05-21 07:02 UTC
They are not cut off at all.
In what way are they cut off? Microsoft, FI, has already stated that they are not going to in any way block VP8 support. Waiting to see which way the wind blows does not leave them cut off.
And the funny thing is: MPEGLA doesn’t even have to sue, hence violate the license provision, to completely draw VP8 to a standstill. All they have to do is start a patent pool, allow anyone to make submissions, and say: okay, you need to license this patent pool in order to legally use VP8 and be indemnified from a lawsuit withOUT actually suing anyone. AND companies will gladly pay. Commercial entities would RATHER pay a license and be indemnified than risk using a potentially problematic codec without legal protections. Because commercial enterprises have MONEY and have legal responsibilities to worry about.
Maybe that’s because the source code was not as easily accessible as it’s now.
Just because VP8 does some things different, it does not mean that the aspects it does the same are not patented.
Don’t make things up, using Garrett-Glaser’s comment of -“With regard to patents, VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free.” and try to turn it into vp8 being ‘a modified h264 baseline codec’ comes of as quite desperate. As for the patents, Garrett-Glaser ignores patents so he is hardly qualified to make that judgement. Now he can definately make code comparisons between vp8 and x264 and make speculations, but I doubt he has any idea of wether the techniques in question are patented, or if they should hold up in court. Howerver, I think it’s pretty reasonable to believe that Google themselves has a pretty good idea of exactly what is patented or not, it’s sort of in their interest.
Why does implementing patented techniques result in incapability to identify patents? After all, he works with them.
He’s likely more qualified to comment on patents than some Wikipedia dude or an Opera guy who both do not a relationship as deep with multimedia codecs as the x264 guy has.
If you willingly infringe on a patent, the court will award triple damages against you. This is a very, very good reason to avoid even reading someone else’s patents.
However, he is nowhere near as qualified to comment on patents as a party that was developing codecs themselves at the same time as MPEG LA, and applied for patents themselves, and had some of their applications granted and others rejected. Hello, On2.
He is nowhere near as qualified to comment on patents as a party that was awarding/rejecting patents, and informing applicants of the reasons (if any) for rejection. Hello, USPTO.
x264 is hosted in France, not the US. US courts have no authority there.
x264 developers are reportedly trying to convert their product to closed source, and start to charge people for it.
If they wish to sell x264 to anyone who does business in the US, then they will have to address the issue.
Any proof of that?
No … I said “reportedly”. That means that I read it somewhere, some one reported it.
That is by no means “proof” of anything.
After doing an apparently thorough search, Google are saying they are very confident that it doesn’t infringe.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/google_confident_on_vp8_and…
My bold.
There is no reason why the kind of optimisations that Xiph have applied to Theora for Theora 1.2 (Ptalarbvorm), which are still ongoing, cannot be applied to WebM also.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/theora/demo9.html
In particular, Activity masking, Altered Skip weighting, quantization matrix adjustments and Temporal RDO techniques might be useful.
Because of their nature, I’d imagine that the earlier improvements Xiph made to Theora (for Thusnelda), however, probably don’t apply to WebM.
Likewise, since VP8 patents are released royalty-free by Google, there is a possibility that some of those techniques could be back-ported to Theora (as long as the file structure supports it).
Edited 2010-05-21 01:15 UTC
Microsoft said the same about VC-1 a few years ago when they opened up Windows Media to the ITU consortium as competing standard against MPEG-4.
Turned out that Microsoft is not the sole patent holder. VC-1 is covered by fewer patents than MPEG-4 AVC, but it’s still covered by 3rd parties’ patents.
There is a train of thought that leads one to speculate that Microsoft might have wanted this to be the outcome.
Losing against MPEG is a desired outcome for Microsoft??? What?!?!
If VC-1 had won, Microsoft would be the premier provider of encoding tools that — of course — only work on Windows, hence pushing Macs out of the media creator’s desks. Microsoft would have the premier streaming server lineup.
Ect. pp.
Microsoft got good PR for trying to release VC1 as open, and yet now it is somehow not open and it cannot be used by any open source competitor.
Microsoft get their video codec lock-in, they get no bad PR for having that lock-in, and Macs can easily be killed as competition later on.
There was no “LOSING”. Microsoft voluntarily submitted the format to the ISO themselves which they knew would involve a patent review. Either way, whether or not they intended it or not — it would appear they were very stupid about their misappropriation of patents. The point being: too many people hear are claiming there is no way this could happen because Google “is smarter than that.” Well, if Microsoft didn’t intend for VC-1 to be overtaken by MPEGLA, they were VERY, very, very stupid. And they’re pretty smart too.
How exactly would creating a royalty-free, re-implementable standard from VC-1 have locked people into Windows?
They might have had a head start since they already had an implementation, but assuming it wasn’t a joke of a standard (like their OOXML) then it would have been easily re-implementable by others. And the best version would have likely been an open source rewrite, just like it is for H.264 and x264, and probably will be the case for VP8 and some as yet unlaunched project.
Official Microsoft PR spin (translated): Microsoft alone can supply VC1 with all the required permissions (licenses), unfortunately <sarcasm>because of that nasty patent troll that attacked VC1</sarcasm>, and unfortunately the trolls insist it must be closed with no open implementation. Because it is mostly Microsoft IP, with a bit of IP owned by that nasty troll, the combination is only legally available from Microsoft. This is clearly not Microsoft’s fault. And oh, BTW, Microsoft offers it to you only if you have one of these Microsoft-endorsed platforms to run it on … <list of platforms that excludes whatever Microsoft feels like excluding>.
Edited 2010-05-21 13:03 UTC
He did comment a few things in his blog. I asked about the quality of VP8 and this is what he said:
He also has comments about the spec and the patents:
http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/50239.html
What is Maxwell’s and Haavard’s rationale for claiming that no internet video should ever target anything greater than Baseline? Google is telling me I can have fullscreen Flash video on my 50 inch tv today; I watch HD-quality web video at fullscreen on my PC every day. Why is anything superior to AVC Baseline out of the question?
It’s not that it’s out of the question, but H264 is a fairly complicated spec, and right now, almost nothing implements more than just the baseline. Which is important when doing comparisons – there’s little point in criticising VP8/WebM for not having all of the H264 features, when in practice, H264 implementations don’t have those features either.
Baloney. As I said, I watch AVC Main video on the internet on a daily basis … all the way on up to High 4:4:4: Predictive.
If VP8 is intended to replace or supplant .flv, it is certainly fair to compare it to any of the Profiles and Levels supported by Flash.
Did they make that claim?
No.
They pointed out that if you wanted to target all those devices and mobile phones out there with H.264, you would be stuck with the baseline profile.
That’s because that’s what the hardware supports.
And lack of hardware support was one of the main arguments against Theora, remember?
The VP8 codec as shipped was probably better with all the positive comparisons. But that as such – for whatever reason – is not what Google released. I suspect there were some deep optimizations that were backed out to make it portable C for the spec and for the library.
Even Theora has an optimized ARM version.
It appears that WebM is VP8, two steps back to make it open and portable. Those steps should be retraced quickly.
The implementation of VP8 in WebM did not get worse than at release, h.264 implementations simply got better…
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100520/googles-royalty-free-we…
I’ll match your link to mere speculation, and raise you this link which includes a direct quote from a Google rep that Google have done a thorough investigation, and are confident that WebM does not infringe any other patents.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/google_confident_on_vp8_and…
Royalty-free? Yes indeed.
Edited 2010-05-21 01:28 UTC
Microsoft said WMV9/VC-1 was solely their own creation as well. What’s your point? Am I supposed to expect Google to say, “Yeah, there’s definitely some bits that are really damn iffy and some parts we aren’t sure about, but hey, we’re Google so we hope to slip this past everyone.” No, I do not.
My half-joking response follows:
If my experience with Microsoft’s search offerings are any indication, I’m not surprised they weren’t able to find any information regarding patents held by other companies that may have covered portions of VC-1.
Poor bastards probably just got ads for Patent offices and porn.
I read the technical analysis of VP8. Although the article certainly carries quite a bit of bias towards h.264 considering who wrote it, the technical points are probably not far from the truth. By that I mean that I seriously doubt VP8 will become _better_ than h.264 in the near future, if ever. But it is still pretty good, even the writer of the article essentially admitted it was pretty descent.
Regardless, it is definitely good enough. Hell, Theora was good enough. I don’t much care that it is not technically superior to h.264 – as I said many times before being royalty free counts for a lot more than technical capability when it comes to the web.
I personally don’t expect Apple to come onboard with WebM though – they are too heavily vested in h.264. They may add support for it, but they are never likely to put any weight behind it. I would assume Desktop Safari on OSX will be able to support it as soon as a QT plugin i available for it, but their mobile stuff is a different matter…
It isn’t just a matter of hardware support – they also have the issue of HTML live streaming which Apple has put a lot of effort into. That is the only method of streaming Apple currently promotes for sending video over 3G networks, and it is currently defined only for h.264/aac streams in MPEG2-TS containers. You might be able to use VP8 in an HTML live stream, but it would have to be in an MPEG2-TS container to be valid as per the current spec, which makes it essentially something other than WebM which defeats the purpose.
The point is this streaming method is _already_ pretty much a defacto standard within Apple’s infrastructure – and no one else currently supports it. They don’t seem to care much about broad industry support at this point, they are content to solve their own problems in their own way. It is published as an open spec, but the fact that it is so narrowly defined and requires h.264 makes it unlikely to be picked up by the rest of the world. I realize the same can be said for WebM, but being royalty free makes the fact that it is narrowly defined kind of a moot point…
Whatever, Apple always does their own thing – and the rest of the world moves on.
theora’s big advantage was that it decodes with 30% less cpu resources than h264. vp8 is apparently the same as h264. People may comment about mobile dedicated hardware. My take on those responses isn’t *if* theora/vp8 can be hardware accelerated but by who (advantage vp8 here).
google having frozen vp8’s features (b frames, etc) makes me wonder how it compares feature wise, and complexity wise for implementation. Guess have to wait for the theora guys analysis of vp8 next.
Theora and h.264 have also had plenty of time for optimized decoders to be written, in time similar improvements will come to VP8 as well…
Out of curiosity, how much of the optimisations in VP3/Theora can be ported to VP8?
My friends. I have a solution we can all agree on: http://blog.quaddmg.com/2010/05/20/the-solutions-to-all-our-problem…
Take a look and tell me what you think. This will stop all the arguing and whining. I am holding the goddamn joker here.
I’m getting a little over-excited, but it’s so hard to stop myself.
Edited 2010-05-21 04:48 UTC
So, if I understand you right, you’re suggesting that we create video streams out of high-level programming language, such as how documents are rendered out of something like postscript or LaTeX, or how video games are rendered using GL shaders?
If so, then I must regretfully say: Sorry dude, I don’t think that will work.
Sure, glorious HD scenes can be rendered in as little as 64k, but a) it would be incredibly lossy in the sense that rendering engine shortcomings would make the difference between the originally captured stream and the rendered video as seen by the viewer more than a little… significant. And b) a realistic encoder (converting a stream to textures and geometry) is virtually impossible, barring major paradigm shifts in current video processing
Actually, I think something like this would work. It wouldn’t solve any patent issues, but it would mean that ‘freezing the bitstream’ wouldn’t be such a big deal.
You just need to make the bitstream turing complete, efficient, and have access to GL primitives and the like (maybe like WebGL). The idea is that you would embed the codec into the bitstream — which is really easy to do, since codecs are pure functions and not that big code-wise.
Like I said, doesn’t solve patent problems, but (like any turing machine/VM) solves all flexibility issues.
I think it definitely shifts the patent issues. It’s no longer something the spec nor the decoder has to worry about. If someone wants to build an encoder using these techniques and pay MPEG-LA, then sure, but that’s where this stuff is relegated to. I’d be interested to hear more on why you think it doesn’t solve the patent problems.
There are actually simpler machines than Turing machines (and I’ve no idea what they are) which cannot do everything but for the purposes of “things that can be put on a DSP” are actually what we’re looking for. The spec itself would be working to that machine instead, then downconverting to GL. Sort of like the distinction between Java Applets and Java Applications (but obviously both are real Turing machines, just that one is a limited form of the other).
Like you say, part of the intent here is to make the codec really flexible and still hardware supported.
I don’t think that’s true. All I was saying about the 64k thing is that there’s no floor to the theoretical efficiency of the codec. In addition, if you can make a demo in 64k, then theoretically you can make a video of the demo in 64k. If you were capturing a movie, then sure you wouldn’t be able to do it, but then again, maybe one day some guy would build an incredible encoder to read the data straight from the matrix. In either case your efficiency can be incredibly good, which is one of the touted features of h264.
The paradigm shift is actually exactly what I’m suggesting, but like I said, if you squint it’s not a paradigm shift at all. h264 is a step in this direction anyway when compared to MPEG-2. All we’re doing is coming at it from completely the other end, which means no patent issues. Frankly if you don’t shift the paradigm some guy is going to come up and tell you you’re infringing on their patent.
H264 could make you sandwiches while VP8 punches you in the face while watching a video but i’d still pick VP8.
Technical specs shouldn’t matter when MPEG-LA wants to own everything we watch in every single level of production and consumption.
Open and royalty free all the way.
“appears to be significantly weaker”
I have not yet seen an optimized implementation for x86/x86-64 or even ARM (and my favorite MIPS64). So, how can they claim it?
On the contrary it seems to me that a proper hardware documentation-specification (and not how the HW was created) like SSE3 / Neon instruction sets and unlike current gfx cards which lack such a polished exposed API at the HW level can lead us into the future.
To me the benefits and possibilities are tremendous and certainly not “significantly weaker”. Hats off to ARM/Google and Intel.
It is very much possible, within a degree of error, to simulate potential optimizations. When H.264 was first released all of the implementations sucked but within months numerous companies had projections for what would ultimately be accomplished in software and in hardware — without having produced the software or the hardware. Those predictions have borne out over the last several years. One man’s opinion is not enough but it is a start; he cannot be dismissed outright.
No. VideoNews? PhoneNews? GadgetNews?
As devices and bandwidth get ever faster and bigger, hardware acceleration and quality per bitrate will matter less and less.
Leaving openness as the major benefit.