Mozilla and Wikimedia Foundation throw their weight behind open source web video

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Pay attention, because this one’s important. Web video has issues. It has issues because it’s closed, and proprietary. The vast majority of web video is delivered in the Flash format, which owned by Adobe. This means that video sites have to suffer restrictions and pay license fees. Wouldn’t it be better if there was an open source version?

Enter Theora. It’s an open-source video codec which, when combined with the Vorbis audio codec and the .OGG file format, could replace Flash as the dominant form for web video.

Nokia's DVB-H standard adopted by EU as official mobile phone TV format

Mobile phone TV, eh? The amazing-for-30-seconds flash-in-the-pan literally nobody cares about? Well, somebody cares. Nokia cares. And the European Union cares. Together, they have just announced that the DVB-H digital format is now the preferred format for mobile telly in Europe. Hooray!

What this means for us is we’re about to get bombarded with promotional images of mobile phones showing football clips on, as everyone thinks men watching football clips is the only way to sell TV services. Like this:

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Sorry this news is a bit dull and about digital TV formats…

Ocean Blue calls for a single PVR standard

ocean_blue_software.gifOcean Blue Software has called for a single standard for digital TV recorders (PVRs). Managing Director of Ocean Blue said that the introduction of Freeview Playback has been a step in the right direction, but that most PVRs contain proprietary software due to a lack of industry standard guidelines.

Ocean Blue would like to see a single brand across satellite, cable, and even IPTV broadcasts. Their Voyager software system is already the standard mandated middleware solution for Freeview digital TV receivers, while Sunrise is a DVB compliant suite of software that can receive analogue and digital video and audio, with Surfsoft being a Freeview Playback standard.

Could Ocean Blue be suggesting that they would offer the best software standard?