Mozilla Firefox To Pack H.264 Support

[btarunr]

It looks like Mozilla has given in to the pressure of incorporating H.264 CODEC into its Firefox web-browser, and could incorporate it in future versions of the browser. The CODEC allows online videos utilizing H.264 format to run. Mozilla has been avoiding H.264 support since it is proprietary, riddled with patents, and requires Mozilla to purchase a license for millions of Dollars from MPEG-LA.

Mozilla has been trying to push for standards alternative to H.264, such as WebM, and the VP8 format. It had originally planned its push for an H.264-free web at a time when it was a much stronger player in the web-browser market, which now sees a strong presence of Google Chrome, which already features H.264. H.264 is superior to its alternatives, in being lighter on the system's resources (hence, lighter on the battery).



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Delta6326]

Too bad its going to cost them $$$ But some times you have to spend the money to get more attention.

 

[NC37]

Too bad its going to cost them $$$ But some times you have to spend the money to get more attention.

But...that means the version a week strategy doesn't work to get attention!! What a cruel world we live in!! Oh the humanity!!!

 

[btarunr]

Should cost Mozilla about $5 million.

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

...

Really, It running well on my Google Chrome...

 

[MikeMurphy]

Mozilla flopped over pretty easily.

The H.264 group has quite a disturbing strategy.

 

[MikeMurphy]

Wait, they flopped because Chrome had H.264? Google isn't backing H.264 and I think they had plans to can it soon.

 

[btarunr]

I think this H.264 license will destabilize a lot of things at Mozilla.

• Mozilla will no longer be able to guarantee that their product is 100% open-standard/open-source (because it will contain some closed-source code),
• It won't be able to give away Firefox source-code which contains H.264 CODEC to just about anyone, because that could conflict with the license
• Browsers that are derived from the Firefox source (eg: Waterfox) will not have access to the H.264 CODEC.
• It will dent Mozilla's image in the OSS community.

In my opinion Mozilla should have flipped the bird at H.264 and carried on. H.264 web-content is still in its infancy, and lack of support from Firefox should instead hinder its adoption, not that of Firefox.

 

[Mussels]

pity its such a pain to support, since its such a widely used codec.

 

[RejZoR]

Actually from what i heard it won't cost Mozilla anything. Microsoft already paid for H.264 codec so Firefox on Windows platform shouldn't cost Mozilla anything. Same applies to handheld devices, because vendors who made the devices already paid H.264 license. Firefox will just utilize that.
Not sure if i understood this right but it sort of makes sense.

 

[Red_Machine]

All I have to say is this:

 

[Isenstaedt]

H.264 for streaming online videos? Hmmm... would it allow streaming with multiple connections? I'm tired of downloading files @ 500 KB/s but not be able to stream a video without it having to buffer.

 

[btarunr]

All I have to say is this:

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/16669503.jpg

Google Waterfox.

 

[Red_Machine]

I know of it, but I'd rather it was official. It's been in alpha since Firefox 5, as far as I know.

 

[Static~Charge]

I know of it, but I'd rather it was official.

Powered by Mozilla and Waterfox 9.0.1
Jan 7, 2012

Waterfox has now been accepted as a project by Mozilla and has been placed on their website!

http://waterfoxproject.org/news/26/15/Powered-by-Mozilla-and-Waterfox-9-0-1.html



That's official enough for me.