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Apple discriminating against non-YouTube video services?

updated 01:45 pm EDT, Mon October 19, 2009

Controversy surrounds H.264 on iPhone


Apple is not playing fair in terms of supporting video hosting services beyond YouTube, claims the chief technical officer of Dailymotion. Olivier Poitrey comments that the iPhone edition of Safari relies on a special plug-in for YouTube videos, allowing it to jump straight to H.264-encoded copies. Because of Apple's battery and processor worries, Flash is not supported in any form on iPhones or iPod touches.

The problem, says Poitrey, is that the plug-in technology is not being offered for other services, making it impossible to replicate YouTube's convenience. Dailymotion is said to have contacted Apple on the matter and proposed solutions, but without any response. One workaround is said to involve altering object tags, but this is not supported by a number of CMS (content management) platforms.

Dailymotion is nevertheless developing a dedicated iPhone application, which should circumvent Safari limits and be available in paid and ad-supported versions.


by MacNN Staff

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iPod, iPhone, industry, developer, YouTube, DailyMotion, Apple

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  1. nowwhatareyoulookingat

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2009

    +6
    10/19, 02:17pm | report spam | Reply |

    has he tried

    using the 'video' html tag?

  1. byRyan

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jun 2007

    0
    10/19, 02:20pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    podcast

    well I get my onion.com podcast through the iTunes store on my phone. too bad it only works on wi-fi... but Podcasting is at least one way you can get video onto an iPhone without youtube.

    also I routinely put content out on my website that can be viewed from an iPhone. if you go to http://aLiquidreality.net/48 - I posted a vide in flash, WMV, MOV, MP4 and even iphone. if you click on the link, you can see it right in safari... don't know what their problem is!!!

  1. SaudiMac

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2009

    0
    10/19, 02:36pm | report spam | Reply |

    comment title

    would like to see more services, youtube is becoming worse, every fan made AMV is almost gone from there ...

  1. Oneota

    Professional Poster

    Joined: May 2000

    +7
    10/19, 02:37pm | report spam | Reply |

    Why 2 Dailymotion app versions?

    Someone should tell the Dailymotion guy to just put out one version of the application, have it default to the Free, Ad-supported version with a prompt asking if the user wants an ad-free experience. If so, do an in-app purchase to switch to the full version. Much better experience, and no need to maintain 2 versions of the same app.

  1. danviento

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Dec 2005

    -1
    10/19, 03:22pm | report spam | Reply |

    Discrimination? Come again?

    I'm sorry, but the term "discrimination" has a legal undertone that just doesn't apply here. Apple can partner and not partner with whomever they want and people's use, or lack thereof, will determine whether it will continue to work for the company.

    Yes, to discriminate, as in to choose some and not others, is an applicable term, but with its latest uses, it taken on a tone that doesn't make any sense in this situation. Way to use inflammatory language again, MacNN. Do you find it useful?

  1. cmoney

    Mac Enthusiast

    Joined: Sep 2000

    +2
    10/19, 03:42pm | report spam | Reply |

    creepy

    off topic but dude really needs to change his look otherwise, he looks incredibly creepy in that photo.

  1. entropy

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Sep 1999

    -3
    10/19, 04:35pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Crybaby

    That's the first word that came to mind when I read the headline for this article. I wish the author had been a little more harsh in his prose. Apple doesn't have a moral obligation to support every marginal site that decides to raise a stink.

    ~ Kiran

  1. Salty

    Professional Poster

    Joined: Jul 2005

    -1
    10/19, 05:21pm | report spam | Reply |

    Oi

    Uhh is it just me or couldn't they just put an H.264 video into the site and have it play? You can't get mad at a company for you not being big enough to be worth partnering with.

  1. azeitona

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 2009

    +5
    10/19, 05:52pm | report spam | Reply |

    RE: Oi

    Here is my reply to byRyan (folded by default so nobody read it) which can anwser to your comment Salty:

    Adapting an embed code in your own pages to adapt it to a device like the iPhone is easy, and Dailymotion does it for its own site. The problem here is about embed codes - this piece of HTML you copy/paste on your website to embed a video of those services. Here, the service have no control on copy/pasted code once it is pasted on another website, and thus have absolutely no way to adapt it to devices not supporting flash.

    To work around this problem with Youtube, Apple did include a plug-in in mobile safari which parse every pages you visit to find embed code for Youtube videos. When such a code is found, it is rewrote to embed the h264 version of the stream.

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