I read with dismay recently that the proposed HTML5 video tag has hit a roadblock, primarily in the shape of Apple, Google and Microsoft. Yes, I'm one of those. An Ogg Theora supporter. The debate has raged over which one is the better choice for the new standard, the free Theora or the technically superior H264. Thanks to a lack of agreement amongst the industry players, it's starting to look like a standard format will not be chosen. That's a bad thing.

The Backers

Apple has stepped forward to back H264 claiming a lack of hardware decompression support by Theora. Admittedly, this true, but it's not really a deal-breaker, unless you happen to be using a mobile device, in which case it would chew up the battery faster to play Theora media versus H264. Since Apple is big in the mobile space, that would be bad for business. Their other argument is pure nonsense since they claim that Theora could be hiding submarine patents. Apple of course conveniently ignores the fact that H264 could be just as guilty of hiding such patents, and has the known weakness of royalties that MPEG LA can alter to suit themselves after the 31st of December 2010. Google has taken the middle ground somewhat, by providing support for both formats in their browser, though they have made it clear that they favour H264, which is understandable because they own YouTube. Ignoring the costs associated with re-encoding the countless videos that haven't been DMCA'd yet, a less efficient encoder would cost them money in terms of storage, CPU utilisation and bandwidth consumption. Mozilla have chosen Theora having already provided support for it in their latest browser. They are a vested interest in Theora as they have been funding some of the development. Since Firefox is open source, Mozilla would simply not be legally able to include H264 decompression as they would be unable to collect royalties from Firefox users on behalf of MPEG LA. Opera have opted to support only Theora, citing the cost of licensing H264, which is completely reasonable. Microsoft have kept uncharacteristically quiet during this bun fight, though it's quite easy to see that they are standing at the back of the room, trying to look innocent while suppressing a smirk. They can financially afford to support the adoption of H264 but I doubt they would want to. Failing ownership of the standard, it'd be in their best interests that the market remain fragmented to hurt their primary competitors, Linux and Apple. For once Microsoft got what they want, without being the bad guy. Although Adobe are on the HTML5 committee, they don't have the power to influence the outcome. They will be the most affected should a standard be agreed to because it will marginalise their buggy middleman, which is better known as Flash. I think I can hear them cheering in the distance...

Get the Facts

Plenty of benchmarks have been run lately that show that H264 is technically superior to Theora. Based on the poor uptake of Blu-ray versus DVD, I would argue that Jane and John Doe really couldn't care less about the quality difference between the two. H264 would have to be a lot better than Theora for it to matter , and I'm talking about an order of magnitude better, in the same way that DVD was light years ahead of VHS, or CD was ahead of vinyl. H264 is simply not that good. If you want further proof, then just take a stroll through YouTube. It's obvious that users largely don't care about picture quality, or even sound quality for that matter. The other big difference between the two formats is the licensing terms. Theora is free to use, and while H264 is currently free, it may not remain so.

Internet broadcast (non-subscription, not title-by-title) – Since this market is still developing, no royalties will be payable for internet broadcast services (non-subscription, not title-by-title) during the initial term of the license (which runs through December 31, 2010) and then shall not exceed the over-the-air free broadcast TV encoding fee during the renewal term.

Over-the-air free broadcast – There are no royalties for over-the-air free broadcast AVC video to markets of 100,000 or fewer households. For over-the-air free broadcast AVC video to markets of greater than 100,000 households, royalties are $10,000 per year per local market service (by a transmitter or transmitter simultaneously with repeaters, e.g., multiple transmitters serving one station).

These quotes were taken from the H264 licence. It seems pretty clear that after 31st of December 2010, MPEG LA's intentions are to start collecting cheques from people with popular websites. Then again, we don't really know what they are going to do because MPEG LA can set the terms of the license to whatever they want when the license expires. They could conceivably continue to provide H264 for free, but they are the representatives of patent owners, and presumably those patent owners joined MPEG LA to make money. This situation brings back memories of the GIF fiasco

The Reality

The end result is that the difference in picture quality, CPU usage and compression ratio between the two formats is irrelevant to almost anyone except major media providers, and unless people like the idea of sending cheques to MPEG LA if their website gets too popular, then a free format, such as Ogg Theora, is really the only viable option for built in browser support. Even if the video tag is stillborn, there is hope that freedom will prevail. Firefox continues to gain market share, and once it has a majority, perhaps with the unwitting support of Chrome, then Ogg Theora may just be too hard for the rest of the industry to resist, even without the HTML5 Committee's blessing.