Will Microsoft Adopt H.264?

At the Streaming Media East show a few weeks back, there were a lot of rumors on the show floor about Microsoft potentially adding H.264 playback to their Silverlight and Windows Media player. While Microsoft has denied this is happening, Jan Ozer lays out numerous reasons in an article at StreamingMedia.com on why this would be good for Microsoft, consumers, content publishers and for the industry. It's an interesting read backed up with some really valid points. Read the article.

Comments

[Philip Hodgetts]

Despite the denials, it seems like they may be doing it anyway. Microsoft evangelist Ben Waggoner linked to this article today:
http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=22
"...The IIS 7.0 Media Pack supports all media file types, including WMV, FLV, and MP4,..."

and

"Built-in support for ASF, AVI, FLV, M4V, MOV, MP3, MP4, RM, RMVB, WMA, WMV"

Seems to suggest a tectonic shift in the standardization of media delivery.

Cheers

Philip

[Ben Waggoner]

Hey Philip,

Bear in mind that we're talking about progressive download from a web server here. IIS has always supported progressive download of all media formats (hard for a web server to not!).

So, while I'm certainly pleased we're improving support for all these media formats (ours and others), I don't now that it really indicates a technonic shift in Microsoft's strategy.

-Ben