On the contrary, is very relevant and this joke is an old one used many times in the codec community.
Theora was supposed to be the unencumbered alternative, then it was VP8 and now it's Daala. Unfortunately, all these and even closed/patented codecs have just muddied the waters rather than being the "alternative" that solves it all.
Getting adoption of codecs is much harder in today's world than it ever was. The online, mobile and browse worlds are so divided than no company would ever want to give another an advantage by adopting the other companies codec.
I am going to have to say that MPEG-4, and specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 and MPEG-4 Part 10 are indeed video encoding standards. The different individual parts even have their own ISO numbers.
Thus I do feel the "relevant XKCD comic" is relevant, even if some find the posting of such comics annoying.
The thing is, the reason for new codecs isn't better covering existing use cases, it's using better knowledge and techniques and wildly changing space/computation/power requirements to fit a new profile.
There's no need to replace telnet. There is a need to replace gif wrt animated images.
A) H.264 replaced MPEG2 largely to make video on disc look better, i.e. an existing use case. B) I am not sure what use cases have to do with the point the XKCD comic was making. The open web people wanted Theora, Google offered WebM and most everyone else settled on continuing to use H.264.
Unless the Daala people can get some good lobbying, or can make their codec in such a way that minimal effort is required by hardware vendors to support both H.265 and Daala, then I think it's likely to end the same way as previous open video codec attempts.
A) Video on disc, with hardware a decade more advanced, is not the same use case any more.
B) I agree that WebM fits with the XKCD comic because it's doing the same thing as an existing widespread standard but 'ours is more awesome trust us'. But changing hardware and math make a legitimate need for the creation of 265/daala. If 265 was already finished and implemented you could make the XKCD argument, but it's not.
I am still going to have to call "video on a disc" a valid use case. The internal hardware would matter if I was arguing that there was no point in advancing video codecs, which I don't think anyone is saying.
I don't see how you can say the XKCD comic applies to WebM/H264 but can't apply to H265/Daala because they are "proposed standards", and have not yet been implemented. If anything that makes it's specifically applicable to H265/Daala. A proposed standard going against another proposed standard touting benefits the other one doesn't have, but in the end it will probably just muddy the water a little bit.
The XKCD comic is about looking at the landscape of near-equivalent standards and trying to make one that's subjectively better.
WebM looked at the landscape of H.264 and tried to be subjectively better. People didn't want to switch, it didn't get anywhere.
H.265 is looking at the landscape of H.264 plus time and better methods/computers and is trying to be objectively better. It objectively uses far less bandwidth for the same quality; it is a generation ahead.
Daala is looking at the landscape of H.264 plus time and better methods/computers and is trying to be objectively better, the same way H.265 is.
H.265 and Daala are equals (as far as I know) in trying to replace obsolete technology. Neither one is trying to be a more friendly/clean/nice replacement at the same level as existing and working standards.
Side note: What is the comic even talking about with character encodings? As far as universal character encodings there's what, three, all of them Unicode? Two if you ignore china? Before that you had a bunch of country-specific pages but they weren't competing. EBCDIC vs. ASCII isn't exactly a plethora either...
Daala is specifically trying to be better than H.265 both on technical merit and patent avoidance. The most popular codecs out there are not free, and previous attempts to inject patent unencumbered codecs only added choices, not solutions. The same will most likely happen again here with Daala. I think the XKCD comic is apt because it sounds like the Daala project is saying "look at all these non-free codecs currently in use. We'll make a better codec that isn't encumbered by patents, and that everyone will want to use instead" - sounds familiar.
You can continue to go on about the march of time, but Daala appears to be getting much inspiration from current gen codecs via the x264 project and WebM.
As far a character encoding, I think you're viewing that problem too simplistically.
"...most Japanese emails are in JIS encoding and web pages in Shift-JIS and yet mobile phones in Japan usually use some form of Extended Unix Code. If a program fails to determine the encoding scheme employed, it can cause [garbled characters]...", that doesn't mention ISO standard character encodings or Unicode, and that's for Japan alone.
While you may not feel that they are directlycompeting, the fact that they exist mean that are vying for attention from developers and content creators. Legacy cruft will often result in old defunct standards living longer than the people who were creating the new standard expected.
Also the XKCD is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and funny, poking fun at the naivety of the thought process regarding the pursuit of efficiency or improvement. I don't think it's really meant to discourage people.
“You can continue to go on about the march of time, but Daala appears to be getting much inspiration from current gen codecs via the x264 project and WebM.”
It distracts from your point that you're comparing a codec to an encoder and a bundle of codecs and container. But either way, why shouldn't a next-gen whatever, learn from the previous gen? Isn't that part of the point?
No it does not distract. Perhaps you should go tell the Daala people it distracts from their project to mention other such video technology projects on their website. If you're going to nitpick at me about it, then you should also bug them about it. I see nothing odd about mentioning those technologies in relation to a video codec project.
There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration, and I never said there was anything wrong with it. I mentioned it to note that Dylan16807's suggestion of H265/Daala having no similar use cases or relation to current generation video technology was not really correct.
Well I'll just hope that Daala manages to reach that goal of technical merit and not be obsolete out the gate.. and Japan is too focused on tradition and afraid to update anything. Fax machines and incomplete character sets for all!
