On Wed, 21 Nov 2018 22:53:06 -0700, Bill in Co wrote:

I am curious as to why you said webm is "much better" than mp4. One article
said that webm is "specifically designed for the Internet" (whatever that
exactly means, since mp4's seem to work pretty well on the Internet, too
(and can also be stopped and paused, etc. etc).

WebM is more efficient than MP4. It has much less wasted data. i.e. media
container overhead. IME, it's more reliable when there's data corruption in
the media. Media container structure corruption, to be exact. I might be
wrong, but I presume it's because WebM has time indexes, while MP4 doesn't.
So, its media playback is more stuck resistant. Additionally, I don't think
MP4 officially support open source streams. e.g. VP9, Vorbis, SSA subtitle,
etc. Meaning that the streams aren't registered in MP4's specification.
Although it actually can contain them.

Like I said, too bad for a lot of us, since so much stuff that now works
(with mp4 files) will be left out in the cold. And that includes some large
screen TVs too, like my Samsung, which can directly play mp4 files on a USB
stick.

Well, that's true in a way. However, without this kind of competition,
better innovations won't exist. I can't imagine how dull it is, if JPEG and
in turns, MPEG never been invented. We'll me stuck with AVI and MOV.

How many TV sets can directly play webm videos saved on a USB stick?

Dunno... very few, or even none perhaps.

I presume there are some shareware programs out there now that can work with
webm video files just as effectively as they did with mp4 files, but maybe
it's too soon.

It's still too soon, I think. WebM won't be considered until MPEG's audio
and video encodings have been overcome by others.