Will Royalty-Free H.264 Revolutionize Web Video?
Over at Macworld, Lex Friedman spends more than 1,000 words talking about video codecs. But it's not all nerd-speak. MPEG LA has announced that it will never charge royalties for free H.264 videos. That's important because HTML5 video, which lets you watch Web video without requiring plug-ins like Flash, is currently difficult for publishers and consumers alike, with different browsers providing limited support for different codecs. While H.264 - which Apple already supports in both Safari and Mobile Safari - already has buy-in from major media companies like CNN, Major League Baseball, and YouTube, this announcement could very well spark a unification of HTML5 video formats.