Mod Blogs: video

26 Nisan 2011 Salı

Netflix bigger than any cable company

If you're wondering why various cable companies have been trying to force Netflix to pay them for bandwidth, wonder no longer. The DVD rental and streaming video service is now larger than any individual cable company in the USA, with 7% of all American households subscribing.

Did I mention I have some free trial codes for anyone who wants them? ;-)

25 Nisan 2011 Pazartesi

Origin of the Species - Peeps

Back in the days when I ate sugar, I always preferred Cadbury Creme Eggs to Peeps as my Easter indulgence. But those little yellow chicks have meanwhile taken over the world. I always wondered where they got started.

6 Şubat 2011 Pazar

The Superbowl without all that pesky football

If you're like me and not a fan of American foot, you probably do enjoy the commercials. Well, if either (1) you just want the commercials or (2) you'll be missing the commercials due to scheduling conflicts or loud partiers, all of the major commercials are up on YouTube and ready for your viewing in HD.

Unfortunately, they do not supply any pigs-in-the-blanket to snack on while watching. For that, talk to CRChair.

27 Ağustos 2010 Cuma

The Future of Internet Video

If you're not a user of an iOS device - iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch - you may not be fully aware of the battle that is currently being waged over the future of Internet Video. A year ago, the "state of the art" was based on Adobe's Flash player. But with the rise of the iOS juggernaut and Steve Jobs's refusal to allow Flash on his mobile devices, HTML5 is on the rise. HTML5 includes a new "video" tag in the base specification, so Flash is no longer needed, but now the debate has shifted to which Codec (i.e. the way video is encoded into a file and transported across the internet) will be the future. The two top contenders for the moment are WebM/VP8 - a standard owned by Google and being pushed as royalty-free - and H.264 which is used today for YouTube, iTunes, and most hardware-based encoders.

Up until now, the primary argument against H.264 has been the number of patents involved, and the high licensing fees for people who want to include H.264 in their devices/software which would be prohibitive for Free Software/Open Source groups.

The newest move in this battle was an announcement yesterday from MPEGLA that H.264 would remain royalty-free "forever" for websites and customers to use. This was taken by some to cut the feet out from under WebM/VP8 proponents. But today, Mozilla reminded everyone that this does not mean it is free to software or hardware makers. And until it is, Free Software and Open Source browsers like Firefox may be unable to support it.

This is required reading for anyone interested in the future of TV and movies on the web.