Facts:
News -
GStreamer OpenMAX IL wrapper plugin 1.0.0 release 3/22/2013 and we got a PS3 Firmware 4.40 update on the 21st and the PS Store app updated to version 1.04.
The GStreamer team is pleased to announce the first GStreamer OpenMAX IL wrapper plugin release for the new API and ABI-stable 1.x series of the GStreamer multimedia framework.
2/22/2012
Video on Gstreamer 1.0:
1) Sony uses Gstreamer to play
TV video on their Google TV (Gstreamer
Very integrated into the TV) @ 2:30 min.
2) "We are about to release Gstreamer 1.0." @ 3:45.
3) Started talking about Gstreamer 1.0 in 2007 @5:50 (2007 Collabora proposed Gstreamer for HTML5 <video> with Cairo bindings in GTKwebkit, two months later Sony sent Collabora a PS3 developer kit late 2007, in 2007 OpenMax 1.2 was projected for 2008 but was delayed from 2008 till Nov 2011. Big issue for GST - OpenMax was memory management which Openmax 1.2 addressed. In another talk Collabora/Gstreamer 1.0 employee commented on the extreme amount of time getting standards approved through Khronos (OpenMax) ).
4) 2006-on and Texas Instruments, Nokia and others were doing research on using Gstreamer via OpenMax framework which resulted in GST-OpenMax and exposed the issues that needed to be addressed in both Gstreamer and OpenMax.
5) 2009 a Gstreamer DASH ultraviolet DRM player was released.
6) From 2009, maybe earlier, Sony has been using OpenVG & Pixman for the XMB and AVM+ (Open source for non commercial use Flash video player which uses OpenVG) for Non-commercial video and Dash IPTV.
7) Sept 29th 2010 Sony publishes open Source Webkit javascript engine as required. Inside the disclosures it's found to be a GTKwebkit version.
8) Feb 2011 Khronos published the webGL 1.0 specs and Sony published more Webkit updates and Cairo (Cairo versions are tied to WebGL specs to support WebGL webkit) Inside new disclosures is edited GTK Chrome to POSIX chrome. NEWs picks this up and Chrome coming to the PS3 races around the world in error, it's the UI Chrome not the Chrome browser.
9) Sony is to use what front end player for commercial DASH and AR? (on Vita and PS3 backend is OpenMax IL).
As mentioned, Vita got a GPU accelerated browser and both the Vita and PS3 are using GTKwebkit2 APIs. To this point the PS3 browser is CPU only not GPU accelerated and has no OpenGLES/Cairo support (uses OpenVG which by design is the 2D portion of Cairo with a couple of minor changes).
Gstreamer now has official GST-OpenMax support and the PS3 and Vita use OpenMax IL as the video player back ends.
A few days ago Google's Chrome OS got the new HTML5 DRM proposed by Netflix/Google/Microsoft and Netflix is now available on the Chrome OS.
Speculation: The PS3 uses OpenMax IL as the back end for video media and has/is using Flash AVM+ for the front end. It may switch to Gstreamer - Openmax because Gstreamer appears to be a standard front end for video players in Opera, Firefox, Sony TVs, GTKwebkit and more.
Several key components of GTKwebkit's version of HTML5 video are now mature enough to be used in the PS3 and Vita. HTML5 video player DRM is now being implemented. It appears all the pieces needed for Sony to have a full blown Media ecosystem are now in place. Firmware 4.40 may have those pieces and when Sony is ready the PS3 will get a MAJOR update to the HTML5 software stack.
When though?