[MBCook]

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?

[izacus]

So VP9 is "just" used by the largest video streaming service in the world, which is quickly dwarfing Blu-Ray.

[MBCook]

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?

[clouddrover]

> 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...

[MBCook]

Applenuses the same codec everywhere. They needed H264 support for other things (like video foot recorded from iPhones, or physical cameras). They also support it in Safari.

This isn’t like Mozilla, who only makes a web browser.

[clouddrover]

I really don't know what you're trying to argue. We're talking about web video here. There's nothing stopping Apple from adding VP9 support. VP9 outperforms H.264 and the other major browsers have added support for it.

Apple will be adding support for AV1. Like VP9, AV1 is royalty-free. The Alliance for Open Media has been so effective (even before AV1's release) and HEVC's licensing has been so terrible that MPEG is starting to question whether it can survive as an organization:

http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solut...

Royalty-free video formats are simply a better way to go.

[acdha]

I suspect what’s going on is that they’ve already invested software and hardware time in HEVC and instead of making a corresponding investment in a codec with similar performance they’re focusing that effort on the next generation with better performance. I suspect that if the full story of VP9 performance & HEVC licensing had been known at the time they’d have made a different call; HEVC got a lot more expensive late in the game when a lot of early plans had been set into motion.