Anyone happen to catch this over on Ars Technica?

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/google-boosts-open-video-by-funding-arm-theora-codec.ars

There is also,
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-times-for-video-on-web.html which talks about it over on Google's blog.

I *do* like the fact that they immediately point out that this doesn't mean much except its being worked on.

Anyone who might be interested, it is available via Subversion repository at http://svn.xiph.org/branches/theorarm-merge-branch

It was previously GPL, however as of 0.05, it has been re-released as BSD.

You can also find the latest zip at

http://www.wss.co.uk/pinknoise/theorarm/Theorarm005.zip

I've not attempted to build it at all yet, (or even download it!) but I wonder if it would help things at all with the Efika MX/Smartbook?

Only in playing back Theora files.

I never understood the fight between Theora and H.264 - the idea that a browser should only support natively open-source, royalty-free formats is sort of braindead. H.264 is great, cheap and pervasive. Theora just isn't, but should be supported TOO, just to serve the idea that sometimes people want to serve video that is great, FREE and pervasive among OpenSource people (after all there are a lot of Theora videos floating around of KDE or Linux conference keynotes.. and potentially a lot more if any device like the iPhone actually supported it).

Let's not even mention the fact that Theora is only "free" because nobody perked up and noticed it implements something they patented yet, if they even care. Only time will tell..

What the world really needs is a hardware Theora codec, Theora support in OpenMAX (since there isn't any right now and it would require extensions) or at the very least, a portable media player that supported it out of the box. Maybe this will help that. But a Netbook? Not so sure..