AVI won to the point where my DVD player supports data disks now, and can play AVI files, or if I wanted to, I could use it as a music player with MP3 files, or a slide show player with JPG files.

It doesn’t support most other video file formats, and since I have an IPod dock, and there’s no reason to use it as a music player, I’m not sure what other file types it supports. But it supports AVI because that’s what the consumer wants.

danieleran: “Once Microsoft killed Netscape, QuickTime and SVG, Flash became the next thing to covet, and tada: Silverlight.”
Flash only became an issue to Microsoft because they were losing business in the video market to Macromedia. The big showcase Silverlight video sites like MLB.com, the Olympics and Netflix were all using the Window Media Player before switching to Silverlight. Windows Media Player was no longer cross-platform, so Microsoft released a Flash-like plugin to keep that market (although they still lost MLB to Flash).

“Flash doesn’t really do anything useful beyond serving as a video player for desktop Windows users without QuickTime installed, so Silverlight doesn’t try to do everything Flash does, it just attempts to replace what Flash is most commonly used for: video distribution.”
Video distribution is a very popular use case for Flash, but there’s also online games, web applications, streaming audio, web cam, 3D, augmented reality and a whole lot more. Which is why the latest version of Silverlight version 3, is now getting very close to the Flash Player feature wise. What I was talking about previously was referring just to version 1, as it seemed that Microsoft cut back a lot of features to get it to the market faster to stop Microsoft from losing more customers using Windows Media Player.

“The fact that Adobe is trying to stay in the game with H.264 support in Flash is also immaterial. It is no longer necessary.”
It’s still a big fact for the article to conviently ignore, especially when the article focuses on Flash video using the On2’s VP6 codec and ignores the h.264 support. This also comes up with YouTube support, where the article talks about Apple convincing Google to support the iPhone with the h.264 codec, ignoring the fact Google can server up the same video files to the iPhone as they use for their Flash version. Actually, Microsoft added H.264 support with Silverlight 3, and there’s examples already out there of Silverlight applications playing YouTube videos. So the fact that you can use one video file for Flash, Silverlight, Quicktime, or the HTML5 video tag (for browsers that support h.264) is a pretty big deal.

BTW, considering you’re mentioning the history of Microsoft’s attempted takeover of the video web market, I’m surprised you didn’t see the reason W3C wants to specify a codec in the HTML standard; because without one, web browsers will use whatever is convenient, and you can be sure due to monopoly pressure that the ultimate winner would likely be Microsoft’s even more obsolete WMV format, through Internet Explorer’s still impressive marketshare. Microsoft even pushes support for things like Silverlight and WMV to Firefox now, to capture as much of the web market as possible…

There is no mistake regarding Netscape and Flash. Netscape installed a lot of plugins for users (including Apple’s QuickTime), but those all became immaterial once Microsoft swooped down and obliterated Netscape’s business by bundling IE.

Without being bundled with Windows, Flash would not have become adopted. And you are right in noting that Flash was not initially used for video; that is the point you seem to have missed. QuickTime was already serving video. Once IE destroyed competition from Netscape and intentionally marginalized QuickTime playback by breaking it in IE (which had become THE INTERNET to most Windows users), Flash was bent into a video distribution hack due to being widely distributed by its use by Microsoft to thwart SVG.

Once Microsoft killed Netscape, QuickTime and SVG, Flash became the next thing to covet, and tada: Silverlight. Flash doesn’t really do anything useful beyond serving as a video player for desktop Windows users without QuickTime installed, so Silverlight doesn’t try to do everything Flash does, it just attempts to replace what Flash is most commonly used for: video distribution.

The fact that Adobe is trying to stay in the game with H.264 support in Flash is also immaterial. It is no longer necessary.

From the article: “Having failed to take over web video itself, Microsoft had at least managed to attach web video to a format that worked best on Internet Explorer.” Yet the Flash Player worked fine on Netscape, with pioneered the plugin format, afterall Macromedia wouldn’t have paid millions to get their plugin on a browser that it didn’t support properly. Meanwhile, this was all before Flash video took off. Even when Flash Player 6 included video, it wasn’t used much at first because of other plugins like RealTime Player, Quicktime and Windows Media Player were dominate. Microsoft wanted it’s own format to be used for video, which is why when it’s Flash competitor, Silverlight first came out, it had very basic functionality but included HD video.

The article ignores the fact that Adobe included the h.264 codec in the Flash Player 9. This is one of the reasons it’s easy for Google to include h.264 videos for the iPhone and for their HTML5 video tag example, as those same files can be used inside their Flash video player for YouTube.

I wouldn’t call AVI the winning container. Flash, QT and AVI all have strong adoption, sites even offering more than one of the three.

Codec wise the MPEG group are doing pretty well since they are quite common as the codec inside all 3 containers. Unless one is reviewing the preferred formats in their video collection from P2P/Copyright Liberated sources, in which case it is DiVX which is guess what, using MPEG group code.

OGG? It’s on wikipedia and I remember a tiny flurry of activity back in 2001 maybe. Wikipedia is massive and puny at the same time, it has the financial clout of a peanut with the search result clout of, well a Wikipedia.

In a game of numbers, those with the most numbers win the game.

When it comes to downloadable media, the game lies not so much with the user but with the provider and the providers interests.

Unless users start being the provider (as per P2P) in which case it would seem OGG Video is long dead and MPEG be it via QT, Flash, AVI or DiVX is closing in on being universal.

Got a DVD to OGG ripper, oh yeah, those >OGG rippers are all the rage.

Several points I disagree with you on:

1) Its not Internet Explorer, its Internet Exploder
2) The Bilski case affects the ability of patents to affect software
3) If Software patents are dead, licensing is also dead
4) Quality in Ogg is as good as H.264
5) File size does not appear to be a big issue
6) Thus bandwidth does not appear to be a big issue
7) Popularity of the file type will depend on the user

AVI won the format war for downloadable video, and MP3 won the format war for downloadable audio. Both won because the public liked them, much to the annoyance of the hardware and software companies who would have preferred their own formats. They were adopted because they did what people wanted, quickly and easily. Also because they didn’t incorporate DRM.

It’s quite possible that the Ogg formats will win the war for playable media. Wikipedia’s backing is a powerful force. I understand that many other sites intend to back the Ogg formats as well. And make no mistake, this is a war of numbers. Various vendors can and will try to push their own proprietary formats (Microsoft Silverlight is what the 2010 Winter Olympics will be webcast with, even though they’ve lost the MLB.COM account). But one of the most important factors is that the Ogg formats don’t contain DRM, and will probably allow easy downloading, which will be a huge advantage to many users.

That said, HTML5 should not have specified a file format, no matter how much people like myself would prefer a totally free format.

While it may not apply to all videos the ones demoed show that they are about the same size and smaller in some cases. That means the same or less bandwidth used so that argument does not hold unless the other camp can show how this was a fluke.

Old technology does not mean it is inferior in fact a having a well understood tech based allows use to be much more sure of the the threats out there like patents which realistic are only as bad as they are in the United States.

The original Apple computers and Unix were vastly Superior to Windows 3 and Windows 95 so on and so forth. But definitely older then either one. By moving to BSD based Apple admitted it was superior to their old base. That tech is much older then anything in a modern Windows (Vista or Seven) but vastly superior again. I don’t believe that the old tech argument holds to the light of day.

The Merits of each format are important and the ones we have brought up are.
-1= disadvantage 0=no/marginal advantage 1=large advantage

Quality, Size, Bandwidth, Patent Issues, Licensing
H.264 0,0,0,-1,-1
OGG 0,0,0,-1,1

Above is the current status as I see it. I could be totally wrong.
But no one has posted any actual counter data that I can find.