With HTML5 supporting a native <VIDEO> tag for including flash-free video, the war for a suitable video codec has started a new battle between Ogg Theora and h264. Jan Ozer just completed a hands-on comparison of the two at various bitrates, focusing on the low bitrates used by most internet streaming services and found h264 the clear victor.

“These tests are very aggressive, but purposefully so—at very high data rates, all codecs look good. In particular, YouTube encodes their H.264 video at 2mbps, about 2.5X higher than my tests. So my conclusion isn&apos;t that Ogg is a bad codec; it&apos;s that producers seeking the optimal balance between data rate and quality will find H.264 superior,”

However, h264 is still encumbered by patents and legal entanglements that, while currently free to users, could turn it into a literal ‘pay to play’ scenario.  This could all prove moot however, thanks to Google’s recent acquisition of On2 and their high-performance VP8 video codec.  In a recent plea by the FSF:

“With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world’s largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec—VP8,” the letter says. “Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web’s dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).”

Where do you weight in on the web video codec debate?

via Ogg Theora vs. H.264: head to head comparisons.