Video Players

By opening up video codecs, so that people do not have to have expensive software like Flash really opens up the legit market. More open source choices are always going to be better for the web.

Sun Tackles Video Codec
By Paul Krill, InfoWorld
Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:00 PM PDT

Looking to boost the Web, Sun is working on a royalty-free and open video codec and media system, company officials said Thursday afternoon.

"The main benefit is that you don't have that now and there are markets, key markets like the Web, that are in need for the Web 2.0 experience a foundation of royalty-free for the media element," for audio and video, said Rob Glidden, global alliance manager for TV & Media at Sun.

Detailed at the Sun Labs Open House event in Menlo Park, Calif., the project is called Open Media Stack or the Open Media System. It was derived out of Sun's Open Media Commons initiative for development of royalty-free and open solutions for digital content.

Currently, proprietary solutions are relied on, such as Adobe's Flash or royalty-bearing specifications like H.264, Glidden said.

OMS is a recent project. Asked about the availability of OMS technologies, Glidden said, "Stay tuned. I have no announcements on any commercial implementations or time frame."

OMS video is to be based on H.26x technology.

What is Sun's catch? Granted they have a large number of products for sale including software, storage, systems, and services. But they also distribute StarOffice with documentation and support for a fee and OpenOffice for free. OpenOffice is open source and is compatible with MS Office. NeoOffice, the Open Office port for Mac even opens Office 2007 files. It is truly lovely.