Microsoft tries undoing Chrome's H.264 omission

From CNET News.com: Weeks after Google announced it would drop support for H.264-encoded video from Chrome, Microsoft announced it's adding support back in through a browser extension for Windows 7 users.

"Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video," said Claudio Caldato, principal program manager on Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team, in a blog post. The software can be downloaded from MIcrosoft's Web site.

The move matches what Microsoft already did with Firefox, which unlike Chrome never supported H.264 in the first place. Mozilla, Google, and Opera prefer the WebM video-streaming technology and its VP8 video codec in particular, which at least for now doesn't require the patent royalty payments that H.264 does for browser makers and those offering for-fee video over the Net.

A requirements to license patents--from a group called MPEG LA in the case of H.264--is antithetical to the World Wide Web Consortium's ethos for open Web standards. "In order to promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented on a royalty-free (RF) basis. Subject to the conditions of this policy, W3C will not approve a Recommendation if it is aware that essential claims exist which are not available on royalty-free terms," the W3C's patent policy states.

The nascent HTML5 standard includes built-in video support in an attempt to make video as easy to use as, say, JPEG graphics on the Web today. But Google's move spotlighted a rift in the HTML5 standards world: because of differing views on the appropriate codec, neither H.264 nor VP8 nor any other codec is specified. And with Microsoft and Apple pushing one way and the other three browser makers pushing the other way, it doesn't look like there will be any resolution any time soon.

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