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November 08, 2013

Has Google Created the Betamax of RTC?


WebRTC is growing as a form of teleconferencing because it allows people to hold conferences through their Web browsers, but Alan Percy, senior director of marketing for Audiocodes, is wondering whether Google’s VP8 video codec is the equivalent of Betamax.

“On the codec front, the folks at Google wisely pushed hard for a standardized set of supported codecs in WebRTC (VP8 for video and Opus for voice) – putting a stake in the ground that gave developers some sense of predictability,” Percy wrote. “ However, those codec choices (VP8 and Opus) as good as they are, were found almost nowhere else in current installed communications systems making them the Betamax in a VHS world.”

For those who only remember modern video formats, Betamax was one of the early home video formats introduced in the 1970s. It had much higher resolution than VHS, but a shorter recording time, lack of titles for video rental and being almost proprietary to Sony doomed its commercial prospects.

Percy is making a similar comparison to Google’s VP8. Even as technically brilliant as it is, it’s no good if nobody uses it. On the other hand, VP8 can succeed if it manages to find an important niche. After all, Betamax, in the modified form of Betacam, was to the broadcasting world what VHS was to home video.

Other companies, like Cisco and Microsoft, have introduced their codecs to WebRTC. Microsoft’s Silk and RTA codecs are used in Skype and Lync, respectively, which could improve interoperability with other teleconferencing platforms. Both Lync and Skype could truly be considered the VHS of the conferencing world with their ubiquity. Cisco, for its part, is pushing to make H.264 part of the WebRTC standard.

Ultimately, he believes that session border controllers might be the best solution to interoperability issues with WebRTC.

Percy will be appearing at TMC’s upcoming WebRTC Conference and Expo from November 19-21 in Santa Clara, Calif., right in the heart of Silicon Valley. He’ll be delivering two talks at the conference: WebRTC Video Directions and SIP & WebRTC - Working Together?.

Want to learn more about AudioCodes? Then be sure to attend WebRTC Conference & Expo, Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, Calif., and visit the gold sponsor at booth #305. Stay in touch with everything happening at WebRTC Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.



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