One of the interesting things about VP8 is that its very similar to h.264. Saying that one device has hardware support for h.264 really means that it has support for some of the operations that h.264 uses; likely that same ones that VP8 uses. In fact, I am willing to bet that is why Android devices 2.3.3 and up require VP8 support; it was easy to add it in.
I don't quite understand, Betamax had superior quality, but in this case this article shows that h264 has more detail at the same bit rate combined with much faster encoding.
Does your standalone device have vp8? All bluray devices can play h264 streams but almost never vp8.
Of course as everything switches to android this will change completely by the end of the decade, but for streaming in 2013, h264 is the better investment.
Once they move to h265 vs vp9 the point is moot but that won't be common for at least five years. The encoding requirements for those streams will also be significant.
You disagree that a free, solid OS like android with a commercial marketplace like the google play store will become ubiquitous?
I mean we are reaching the point where a $20 device can just plug right into a hdmi port and you have a full blown pc with standardized wifi and bluetooth support. By 2018 they will be $10 and sold at gas stations.
When that happens you can have any codec upgrade you want as long as it can still decode on that hardware spec in realtime.
Only if you limit your discussion to mobile platforms. Most recent computers should be able to run VP8 video without the end user taking notice (assuming a generic player like VLC is installed), even if they have to do software decoding.
The ffmpeg guys wrote a VP8 decoder with 1400 lines of C because of how much they were able to reuse. From: http://blogs.gnome.org/rbultje/2010/06/27/googles-vp8-video-...