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by gsich 3056 days ago
Why not? Just go by traffic. Youtube default to VP9 on Chrome, so yes it is vastly used. Netflix can't even display 4K on the desktop properly.

If you watch in the living room (on TV) you are not watching it on the iOS device. By that I mean the screen of the iOS device. Being in the living room, watching on TV, means you have no battery issue. Watching on your device means literally that, watching it on your device with your devices' screen. Not some casting or streaming to other displays.
1 comments
MBCook 3056 days ago
So what you’re saying is since Google has manipulated the environment so that Google’s preferred codec is the most used on Google‘s website, which happens to be the largest video site on the Internet… that means Google’s codec is better.

If we ignore YouTube, which Google controls to their own benefit, what’s the percentage of WebM/VP9 versus H264/H265?

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izacus 3056 days ago
Why are you using double standards when talking about Google's codec choices vs. Apple codec choices. Do you think Apple collecting royalties for h.264/h.265 has nothing to do with them preventing you from using VP9?
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matthewmacleod 3056 days ago
I think we can say with quite a lot of confidence that any royalties Apple receives for h.264 are a rounding error in their income, and they will have ~zero impact on their decision to support other codecs or not.
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MBCook 3055 days ago
H264 is also used by Blu-Ray isn’t it? I know my cable system switched to it from MPEG2 a few years ago.

H264 is used in other places in the electronics industry. That’s one of the reasons Apple picked it. Isn’t it the format most digital cameras record video in?

WebM/VP9 is used by... Google. And Wikipedia (who won’t use something with patent licensing). Is there anything else big?

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izacus 3055 days ago
So VP9 is "just" used by the largest video streaming service in the world, which is quickly dwarfing Blu-Ray.
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MBCook 3055 days ago
Yes. Because they forced it with their pseudo-monopoly on the browser market and de facto monopoly on online video sites.

Basically everyone else uses H264 like Apple since it was the designated successor to MPEG2.

In this case, Apple went with the industry standard. Google is the odd man out.

So why should Apple have to bend to Google’s whim here and implement WebM/VP9?

Why shouldn’t Google just fix their site?

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clouddrover 3055 days ago
> Because they forced it

No, browsers and hardware manufacturers have implemented VP9 because it has better licensing terms than H.264 and especially better than HEVC. HEVC was released at around the same time as VP9 and yet today VP9 has double the installed base of HEVC: https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp...

> In this case, Apple went with the industry standard.

No. When it comes to the web the industry standard is royalty-free formats and protocols: https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20170801/

Video formats which require a patent licensing fee (like H.264 and HEVC) have been an anomaly.

> Why shouldn’t Google just fix their site?

Because VP9 outperforms H.264: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en...

VP9 just works better: https://youtube-eng.googleblog.com/2015/04/vp9-faster-better...

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gsich 3056 days ago
No. It means that it's used.
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