The HTML Hypertext Markup Language is the basis of Internet today.
When it was first standardized in 1990, it mainly defined how the
text, hypertext and image should be shown in a webpage by the
browsers. Different kinds of browsers in the markets were able to
do more or less the same thing and webpages could be correctly
viewed on different platforms as they were compatible with each
other. As multi-media became more and more popular, sound and video
were being incorporated in webpages. The pace of such advancement
was so rapid that browser companies were unable to cope. There were
many third party companies coming into the market offering various
types of software which could be added, or plugged-in, to a browser
to enable it to play audio and video. The Internet world was then
in chaos with companies offering different technologies and file
formats. Browser companies and the Internet users found it very
confusing and inconvenient where webpages were not correctly
displayed all the time and media often not correctly played.
You may have experienced the various types of music files and many
different types of video files which required different devices or
programs to run. Same as the video tape format war many years ago,
many companies are also at war promoting their own formats. Music
format war started early and the battles were on resolution,
clarity, compactness with fans supporting different products.
Audiophiles like no compression or lossless compression files, while
others like highly compressed file with very small size but
acceptable sound quality. For video, the battles were very
intense. You may have heard that Adobe Flash is trying to dominate the
market while Steve Jobs refused to support it in Apple devices.
The latest version of HTML version 5 is meant to solve this
problem. The syntax of HTML5 has been rewritten to make the
language more simple and streamlined. Most importantly, it added
the universal Audio and Video tags in the language so that all
browsers could interpret them in the same way. The most obvious
benefit is that a truce is called among all browser companies. They
can all go and enhance their browsers to support HTML5 and the
standard will be universal. There will be better compatibility
among browsers on all multi-media webpages. On the other hand, you
can guess that the third-party plug-in software companies will go
out of business if they do not diversify, as audio and video
plug-ins are no linger required.
The reaction in the content providers field is enthusiastic. Steve
Jobs commented that HTML5 is the best way forward for a multi-media
Internet over Flash. Adobe announced that it would no longer
develop Flash for mobile devices. Almost all major content
providers are now upgrading to HTML5. YouTube has already released
a test version of HTML5 video playing. In a few years time, users
will migrate en masse to browsers that support HTML5.
However, the world is not as peaceful as we like it to be. While
HTML5 defines the language standard of audio and video tags, it does
not define which file formats should be used. It is left to
individual browser companies to decide which file formats are to be
supported. Judging from the experience of image file format,
browsers would support all popular image file formats in use, as the
program required to code and decode (codec) the popular file formats
are readily available. But of course there are still some advanced
image file formats not supported by any browser and cannot be
displayed in webpages.
Sound and video files are more difficult as these dynamic and
streaming data require more complicated codec. Browser companies do
not want to include many copies of different codec in their
program. They can only choose the most popular ones. This choice
triggered another file format war.
A very popular format today is the MPEG. Its popular audio file is MP3
and video file is MP4. You may think that most browsers would
support these formats. However, there is a hitch. MPEG file
formats are copyrighted. The rights are owned by a consortium of
which the stake holders include Microsoft and Apple. Surely these
companies will push for MPEG as the de facto standard. But many
companies which use open source codes are unwilling to pay the MPEG
copyright fees. They are the giants Google and Mozilla who adopted
copyright-free audio and video file format of OGG. The war at present comes to a
stalemate where different browsers support their own file formats of choice. It
is really like the video tape war where there were different video
tape players supporting VHS and Betamax.
The victims of this war are the content providers and the Internet
users. Much valuable contents are using different file formats and
we cannot give up either one. The solution is troublesome.
Notwithstanding the war and the different file formats used by
different browsers, content provider companies encode several copies of an
audio or video file in all popular formats. The webpages are written in a
way that any browser could detect the file format supported and choose
the correct file to play. This is for the benefit of users who do
not have to worry about file formats. The problem is that the media
file libraries of the content providers are several times larger
than needed.
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