Re: [rtcweb] Stephan Wenger's choices

[Tim Panton <[e-mail]>]

On 30 Dec 2013, at 18:33, Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> 2. Mobile devices on which we want to deploy WebRTC but which can't
> afford to run a modern codec in software but could perhaps use HW
> support (and perhaps could run some older codec).
> 
...
> The second category of elements would benefit from H.264 in the
> sense that they would be able to play video or have better battery
> life or whatever to the extent to which hardware is available and
> usable. The extent to which that's a benefit depends on how often
> that will be the case; I realize that a lot of people believe that will
> be rare, but the evidence I have seen so far seems pretty
> equivocal. Sure, if you think you will never be able to use
> HW acceleration for H.264, then this doesn't seem like a very
> good argument.

There is a subtle assumption there that hardware assist only applies to H264.
I notice that the raspberryPi gained experimental VP8 support using the video GPU
to accelerate it.
http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/01/26/raspberry-pi-now-has-experimental-support-for-vp6-vp8-mjpeg-and-ogg-theora-video-codecs/

What is especially interesting is that this didn't require any hardware changes,
so it may be that many existing 'H264 only' devices could follow suit if there was
a suitable motivation.

Tim.