tepples wrote:
Bluish Coder's post is from two years ago, and since then, "companies have already exposed themselves to this risk because they ship [Theora] based systems." Chrome plays Theora video, and Google Inc. has a large amount of money. Firefox plays Theora video, and Mozilla Corp. has a large amount of money flowing in from an AdSense for Search deal with Google. You snooze, you lose.
I was just clarifying the patent issue with Theora, as many people are unaware On2 did not own all the patents on VP3. There are at least two known companies that have patents that never released their patents and heaven knows how many submarine ones are out there (Although this is true and a risk with any software). I think I read somewhere that the xiph foundation is/was trying to secure any/all possible patents that they do not own. I have no link for that info so I could be remembering it wrong. BTW it would not be the web browser companies at main risk but companies selling/releasing videos in the specified video format. If major companies released movies and such in Theora we could easily get widespread adoption, but the problem is that they have no guarantees that they would not get in trouble down the road. Personally I think it is just pointless paranoid fears, but of course it is not like I am putting my money on the line. Good thing about Dirac is that it has already had some adoption in terms of major HD broadcasting (Beijing Olympics), which to my knowledge has not happened with Theora. Companies are more likely to back Dirac if it is used more in broadcasting.
"tepples wrote:
Comparison shows that Dirac is not there yet. Even MPEG-2, the archaic codec used on DVD Video, trounces it.
Unfortunately all current wavelet video encoders
suck compared to DTCs, but at least Dirac has the most promise, if fully implemented in a well done encoder. It maybe able to even compete realistically with x264, but I might be way too optimistic here. Theora/VP3 will never be able to realistically compete with a well done H 264 encoder in terms of quality over compression, although it can beat crappy encoders like apple's easily (But so can Xvid). Google recently brought On2, so maybe if they open VP8 like was done to VP3 (many speculate that this was Google's plan to begin with), we might get a free/open video format that is a realistic rival to H.264. Widespread adoption would also be easy as Google owns youtube and can just release all videos as VP8s