Ogg removed from HTML5 spec
While I am all for open standards and great free technology there is one piece of the "open source" world which I do not support and never will. Its the OGG container format and its accompanied video codec Theora. The open sourcers are pushing this standard so vocally that you would think their life depends on it. I have never understood this passion because there are obvious quality shortcomings in the standard and also its not as open as it seems - a company made them couldnīt make money off them (because they are just not up to snatch with modern codecs/containers) released them to the public for free opened the source code - but kept the patents just in case.
Now the only thing that does not apply for OGG are the royalties to pay for encoding and that you can have a look at the source code. That OGG was to be included as the recommended audio/video standard in HTML5 is a new to me but I am so much happier that this bid has been dropped (by pressure from Nokia and Apple mostly).
Now I wouldnīt care less if that would not be one of the areas that is vitally important to me. Video quality is really important and Theora falls short on every test I did compared to MP4/H.264. Its bigger has less quality temporal has less quality interframe its generally more blurry. This is why it has failed as a closed source codec and there is no reason to use it just because its open when it is actually a step backward. So I think the decision to leave the video format war open for the time beeing is a good one.
Now can they put a flash video ban in the HTML5 spec please - because even with the inclusion of H.264 its still a plugin in a plugin in a browser playing a resource hungry video - a total waste of processor cycles and something that keeps out 50% of the computers (even a core2 duo with dedicated graphic card chokes on some of the newer highdef flash videos on the net - I donīt even want to know what a 2 year old computer does)
"Ogg's video codec is Theora, which was proprietary. On2 developed it as its closed competition to MPEG-4's H.263 (DivX) and H.264 (AVC) codecs, alongside other competing proprietary codecs from Real and Microsoft (WMV). The winner to shake out of all that competition has been the MPEG-4 standard, which includes both a container and different sets of codecs. MPEG-4 is open and supported by lots of companies, and is also supported by FOSS (x264 is among the best implementations)." - DECS