Less than a year after the release of Theora 1.0, the wonderful people at Xiph have released Theora 1.1. The 1.1 release is a software-only release of the Theora encoder and decoder. It does not include any changes to the Theora format.

"After several years of development, the first beta release for Ogg Theora 1.0 - a free video codec - is now available. Now all we have to do is to get some content in the Theora format."

HTML 5's support of using the Ogg Theora video format in the upcoming tag looked really promising for innovation in the web video area, but not everyone agrees on the new spec.

Don’t misunderstand me, as I’m not preaching the value of proprietary codecs. Despite Theora's shortcomings with rendering speed and overall playback quality in comparison to proprietary alternatives, this does not mean that all open source codecs are loosing ground in the fight for your video viewing freedom.

"...'Ogg' is a wrapper that ties together 'Theora' encoded video and 'Vorbis' encoded sound. Together, Ogg Theora+Vorbis give users a way to see movies on your computer. Ogg Vorbis+Theora are not known to be encumbered by any patents (the only applicable patent on Theora’s predecessor, called 'VP3', was licensed for everyone to use in any way they want).

"...I would like to take this opportunity to talk about one of the greatest things to ever happen to Theora: the Theora Sea website. Really! And I just found out about it now, today, a hour ago. Think of it as a mix of YouTube and Digg for Ogg video only..."

It took long, but the Xiph.Org Foundation has finally released the mature, stable, rock-solid version of the Theora codec. Read the announcement for more information. After last year's attempted patent FUD that went nowhere and Mozilla's adoption of the format for the web, this announcement is another victory for the Open Media cause.

"It was announced at the Firefox Plus summit today that Firefox will include native Theora and Vorbis support for the HTML 5 media elements. So and will support those codecs built into Firefox itself..."

"After over a month of public testing, we're pleased to declare our 1.1 rewrite of libtheora stable. This is the reference implementation for the Theora video codec. Source code for libtheora 1.1.0 is available now, and will be incorporated in major Theora-supporting applications soon..." via hacks.mozilla.org