[theora] Seamless web video within reach

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Denver Gingerich<denver at ossguy.com> wrote:
> Ok, fair enough.  But to keep the simplicity of the solution I
> described (<video> plus JavaScript include), we'll need it hosted on
> some central FQDN that designers (through mv_embed) can refer to.  So
> we will need the Cortado applet to be CA-signed.

Perhaps. But that means a warning.

My own view is that the warning is a complete non-starter. Computer
professionals spend a lot of time telling users to click NO to those
warnings.

If a user is going to blissfully click yes, we might as well swap out
their OS for some linux distro. ;)

>> Java works pretty widely on IE. Okay, lets say 20% it doesn't work on.
>
> 20% of 60% still gives us 12% of all Internet users that can't play
> Theora.  That's pretty big and not very competitive with Flash
> deployment.  This is the main reason I'm hoping to get the VLC ActiveX
> control in better shape.

12% that can't play without installing something.  Same boat for VLC
activeX really.

Arguably development resources would be better spent creating a flash
wrapper for libtheora (compiled to flashvm using alchemy).

This has been done for vorbis already:
http://mauft.com/2009/651/alchemy-ogg-vorbis-frontend

It would result in Ogg/Theora compatibility being ≈ flash.

There is also vorbis in csharp for silverlight... Theora is in
development but clearly has a long way to go. This may be a better
option to long term install-free IE support.