February–March 2016

WebRTC
• WebRTC for WebKit now 'In Development'
• Roadmap update for Real Time Communications in Microsoft Edge
• Plugin-free Skype on the Web a step closer with Edge support
• Google confirms Hangouts will now use peer-to-peer connections to improve call quality and speed
• WebRTC Explained
• Snapchat Chat 2.0
• Holoportation: RTC + 3D capture and recording (thanks Peter Thatcher)
• No matter how you slice it, Apple and WebRTC need each other
• WebRTC Is Not Losing Steam: response to (linked) articles stating the opposite
• Lip-sync Issues: When a Chrome Update Fixes your Application: detailed account of how a complex bug got fixed.
• WebRTC 1.0 now 'under consideration' for Edge (h/t HTML5 Weekly)

Web audio and video
• DASH video player Shaka Player v2.0.0-beta
• Intent to Implement: Storage Quota Estimation API

'Web apps using storage for offline or caching purposes need to answer questions like: Do I have enough storage available to let the user save this media file for for offline use?'

• Unified Media Pipeline on by default in Chrome for Android from version 51:

• Cache audio and video with service workers, since media delivery is now implemented directly within Chrome rather than being passed off to the Android media stack.
• Use Blob URLs for audio and video elements.
• Set playbackRate for audio and video.
• Pass MediaStreams between Web Audio and MediaRecorder.
• Cross-platform development and debugging is easier, since media works the same on desktop and Android.

• Chrome Media publishes white paper on migrating from Flash to HTML5 video

VR and 360°
• YouTube Announces 360-Degree Live Streaming, Spatial Audio
• Mark Zuckerberg Samsung talk at MWC
• a16z Podcast: Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality

Codecs & services

• A Progress Report: The Alliance for Open Media and the AV1 Codec
• BBC R&D: Highest compression efficiency for professional applications now available with H.265/HEVC extensions
• Live Video Encoding and Transcoding Techniques
• VP9 support announced by multiple vendors:
   • WebM, VP9 and Opus Support in Microsoft Edge
   • Amazon Elastic Transcoder Adds Support for VP9
   • VP9 Specification Live on Bitstream
   • Netflix Working on VP9 in an MP4/BMFF Container for MPEG-DASH
   • Brightcove Announces VP9 Support
   • Sorenson Squeeze Announces VP9 Support
   • Media Excel Hero Enables Live VP9 Video
   • Telestream Sets VP9 Coding For Vantage Multiscreen
   • Ittiam Systems Demonstrate VP9 Solutions at NAB 2016
   • Elecard Adds VP9 Support to Stream Eye
   • castLabs adds VP9 support

EME, DRM, protected content

• Mozilla To Test Widevine CDM In Firefox Nightly

Industry

• UK viewers doubled amount of time spent streaming TV in 2015

• BBC and ITV in talks to launch a Netflix-style streaming service
• Chromecast 35% of 2015 Set-Top Box Market
• A Faster YouTubeInternet up, Television down (h/t @BenedictEvans)

January 2016

Industry
• Can upstarts like Vice and Buzzfeed keep their cool?
• Beatles on Amazon Prime, Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play, Groove, Rhapsody, Slacker, Spotify and Tidal
•  SoundCloud in licensing deal with PRS: SoundCloud (175m monthly active users) will now pay royalties to songwriters, composers and publishers; ads and subscriptions for European users in 2016
• Yahoo Screen shut down
•  Netflix in 130 countries (but not China)
•  Netflix launches in India, plans start at 500 rupees (about US$7.50)
• Netflix proxy detection (thanks @slac!)
• Netflix re-encoding all titles at multiple bitrates (from December)
• Al-Jazeera America to shut down after less than three years on air
•  How often do people watch online videos via their smartphone?: from Google Barometer (thanks @gurupanguji!)

WebRTC, realtime, messaging
• The Rise of WebRTC Broadcast and Live Streaming
• Facebook Wants to Kill Phone Numbers Forever
• Skype to provide group chat
• Chrome 49 release notes

Plugins
• Facebook moves from Flash to HTML5 video

Codecs, containers, compression
•  Video Compression: 2015 Year in Review: 4K HEVC streaming services, 4K HEVC patent issues, AOMedia, HEVC Advance revise licensing terms, Microsoft and Facebook support for VP9:

'So we can conclude that VP9 has secured a stronger position in 2015, and is likely to gain additional ground in 2016, driven mostly by the remaining HEVC royalty uncertainties, and the desire to view YouTube videos at the highest quality possible.'

VR and 360°
• Oculus Rift available for pre-order: $599
• Oculus Rift Inventor Predicts Virtual Reality's Future: ' If you're interested in VR, it's going to be an awesome year. But it's not going to be the year that everyone gets interested in virtual reality … .' Oculus Touch controllers coming in 2016
•  The Rise of VR and 360° Video, and why Adaptive Bitrate Streaming is a perfect fit: Bitmovin player (from HTML5 Weekly)

November–December 2015

Industry

• UK most advanced TV-watching country in world, research finds: 'more people using catch-up services and tablets to get their fix of television than in the rest of Europe, Japan, Australia or the US, according to Ofcom research'.

• Netflix now accounts for 37.05% of all Internet traffic in North America

• Thomson Networks to be acquired by Harmonic

• Measuring the Information Society Report: annual ITU report:

[The] least developed countries (LDCs) are making progress with their connectivity initiatives. However, in 2015, only 6.7 per cent of households in LDCs had Internet access compared with 46 per cent of households worldwide and more than 80 per cent of households in developed countries. The report also reveals that, globally, 46 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women are Internet users.

[The] number of mobile-cellular subscriptions approaches 7.1 billion and mobile network population coverage reaches close to 95 per cent. In LDCs, the mobile-cellular price basket continued to fall, down to 14 per cent of GNI p.c. by end 2014, compared with 29 per cent in 2010.

• The Communications Market Report: International from UK regulator Ofcom:

The communications sector’s total global revenues in 2014 were £1,190bn, growing by 1.5% year on year (incorporating the telecoms, television, postal and radio sectors). Global television industries had the largest increase in revenue in 2014, up by £12bn (5%), to £244bn. Telecommunications revenue, although the largest by a considerable margin, registered slow growth of 0.5% to reach £846bn.

• Reuters Digital News Report 2015 (from June — supplement added in October):

News accessed from smartphones has jumped significantly over the last year with average weekly usage growing from 37% to 46%. 

41% [use Facebook] to find, read, watch, share, or comment on the news each week

• Global broadband pricing study from Google: including mobile data from 157 countries

VR

• Google Aims to Make VR Hardware Irrelevant Before It Even Gets Going

• Gear VR: $100 Oculus headset for Samsung Galaxy

WebRTC, realtime, communication

• WebRTC in the 19th century

• WebRTC Japan Meetup (Justin Uberti's talk)

• WebRTC and browser fingerprinting in Chrome

• Face proximity detection

• Firefox unprefixing their WebRTC APIs and planning to drop support for unprefixed

• A virtual machine for WebRTC development: automates setup of the development environment for working on adapter.js

• talklessnow.com: Do I talk too much? Ingenious tool from Chris Koehncke. 

<video> and <canvas>

• HTML5 Video Compositor

Web Audio

• Monitoring audio volume in Web Audio: using FFT (not RMS)

September 2015

Better late than never! Lots of big stories this month.

Codecs, compression, containers
• StreamingMedia survey: 10% of responders plan to support VP9 by 2020 (vs 1% today)
• HEVC Advance reconsidering pricing strategy

Industry
• BBC to open up iPlayer to other broadcasters
•  'Any half-remembered bit of TV or radio findable in 30 seconds or less'
• Facebook 360 video
• Beta HTML5 BBC iPlayer for desktop (using dash.js)
• video.js 5.0: major update
• FOMS 2015 and Demuxed 2015 in SF
• chromiumdev-slack.herokuapp.com: chromiumdev on Slack #media

WebRTC, realtime, communication
• Kranky Geek SF: 14 excellent sessions
• Delay Agnostic AEC turned on for all Chrome users
• WhatsApp Hits 900M Monthly Users, Edges Closer To An Actual Business Model
• First ever call between Chrome, Firefox and Edge

Hardware
• Video of hummingbird in 240fps slomo on Nexus 6P

Web Audio
• Cat purr synthesiser (you may or may not also want to sample the bagpipes)

<video>
• Exploring the Crossorigin Media Attribute in HTML5 (from HTML5 Weekly)
• chrome://media-internals: debug media playback

August 2015

Codecs, compression, containers
• Google partners with Amazon, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix on the Alliance for Open Media. Commentary: TechCrunch, The Verge, Developer Tech, Android Police, Mozilla, Streaming Media
• Microsoft Edge to support WebM Standard
• JavaScript WebM encoder: webm.js
• HEVC Advance wants 0.5% of gross revenue for HEVC


WebRTC, realtime, messaging
•  When One App Rules Them All: The Case of WeChat and Mobile in China: 549 million monthly active users, over one billion registered users:

The way it achieves this goal is through one of the most unsurfaced aspects of WeChat: the pioneering model of “apps within an app”. Millions (note, not just thousands) of lightweight apps live inside WeChat, much like webpages live on the internet. 

This makes WeChat more like a browser for mobile websites, or, arguably, a mobile operating system — complete with its own proprietary app store.
...
I cannot emphasize the importance of this Wallet enough. It’s the Trojan horse that allows WeChat to quickly onboard user payment credentials that then unlock new monetization opportunities for the entire ecosystem.

• WebRTC for 911: 'The software addresses two major weaknesses within most 911 systems: location accuracy and situational awareness.'
• WebRTC in Safari?

Adaptive streaming, DASH, HLS...
• DASH in JWPlayer 7:
   jw7.jwplayer.com/dash.html
   support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/2020482-about-dash-streaming
support.jwplayer.com/customer/portal/articles/2020483-using-dash-streaming
• Google Shaka Player v1.4.1 released
   changelog: github.com/google/shaka-player/blob/v1.4.1/CHANGELOG.mdhosted
   demo: shaka-player-demo.appspot.com

Industry
• Amazon reportedly paying $250M to snag former Top Gear stars
• Amazon turned on the HTML5 player (using MSE/EME) on Chrome globally
• Two-thirds of UK's Netflix and Amazon users don't watch their original shows
• Pay TV rate of decline is acceleratingNetflix US not to renew deal with distributor Epix (Hunger Games, Transformers, etc.)
• Sony Xperia Z5 Premium: 4K screen, 23 megapixel UHD video camera with position sensor
• Elemental acquired by Amazon Web Services (TechCrunch)
• Fox UK to launch free-to-air channel YourTV targeting female viewers