Re:Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward ...
by eordano on Thursday January 13, 2011 @01:26PM
(#2100743)
There is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular).
(edited: typo)
Re:Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward ...
by MiguelHudnandez on Thursday January 13, 2011 @07:13PM
(#2101906)
You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
Re:Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward ...
by beej71 on Friday January 14, 2011 @05:05AM
(#2103075)
That's a fine argument, but it's just not the one in the article.
Re:Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward ...
by DrHankPym on Thursday January 13, 2011 @08:22PM
(#2102108)
Because Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?
Re:Google's dropping H.264 in Chrome is not a step backward ...
by ZeroGravitas on Friday January 14, 2011 @05:41AM
(#2103133)
They'll almost certainly have an H.264 chip but the standard Android browser (and Firefox and Opera Mobile) might not take advantage of it when faced with an HTML5 video tag.
Maybe we'll see Apple and Microsoft release browsers for Android!
On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings.
Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.