WebProNews

Tag: codecs

  • YouTube To Reportedly Show Off 4K Video At CES

    YouTube To Reportedly Show Off 4K Video At CES

    It looks like Google is doing its part to make 4K video available to the masses. The company will reportedly show off 4K on YouTube via its own ultra HD VP9 codec at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas next week.

    This is according to GigaOm’s Janko Roettgers, who reports that Google has “lined up a whole list of hardware partners” to kickstart deployment of the codec, which is to serve as a royalty-free alternative to the H.265 codec used by others. According to Roettgers, YouTube has nineteen hardware partners including ARM, Intel, Broadcom, Marvell, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba, and will be demonstrating the video at the booths of LG, Panasonic and Sony.

    The codec is expected to hit PCs and mobile devices first and TVs by 2015.

    Netflix recently revealed that its upcoming second season of House of Cards will be its first Ultra HD offering though few will likely view it that way for some time.

    These two streaming heavyweights, however, will no doubt usher in mainstream viewing of 4K video, even if it doesn’t happen for a while. The wheels are in motion.

    Image via jm3, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Google Drops Support of Popular Video Codec from Chrome [Update]

    Update: Google has a new post up talking about the move more, and answering some frequently asked questions. 

    Original Article: Google announced that it will no longer support popular video codec H.264 for the HTML5 <video tag> with its Chrome browse. The move has raised some eyebrows. Google basically says it’s about openness and that by removing support for the codec, it will enable innovation. Here’s what Google said: 

    We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

    Chrome Dropping CodecComments on the announcement on Google’s Chromium blog include:

    "Whoah, ballsy move Google. Ballsy move. I like it."

    "No…No more codecs!"

    "Thumbs up, Google."

    "Wow, this is the worst thing to happen to web standards I’ve seen in a long time. This just reinforces the notion that Google doesn’t care about users."

    As you can see, opinions vary, which is probably why discussion about it is all over Techmeme at the moment. 

    Joe Mullen at PaidContent says, "Google has essentially declared war against the web’s dominant video format…"

    MG Siegler at TechCrunch writes, "The problem is that Google’s stated stance is now that they’re all about enabling ‘open innovation’ by removing non-open technologies like H.264…But you can’t be hypocritical, Google. Remove Flash too if that’s your real stance….Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. One of the big backers of H.264 is Google’s ever-growing rival, Apple. More specifically, the technology is front and center to much of what iOS has to offer. iOS, which is the main rival to Google’s Android platform."

    Google says the changes will occur in the next couple months, but that they wanted to get the announcement out there so content providers can prepare.  

    It’s worth noting that Firefox doesn’t support H.264 either. This Wikipedia entry has a pretty helpful chart of which browsers support what.