Firefox on Windows XP will be left without H.264 playback?

[Cordylus Interneter]

Now Firefox is going to drop XP support, yet H.264 playback is not implemented on that platform. Windows XP users are currently the biggest group of users without H.264 support. And the fact that it is to be left this way forever bothers me a lot. It means that I as a web developer won't be able to switch to native HTML5 without a Flash fallback in the foreseeable future. Both as a developer and as a user I waited for this feature for years and now it's likely it won't be implemented at all. That's disappointing.

I don't understand what is the point of not implementing it. Almost any advanced user has an H.264 codec on their XP system installed and is able to play the videos in more performant way than even Flash can, yet it is just not available in the web browser.

What is the problem? License fees? Don't distribute the decoder, use installed one. You are using system decoders on later Windows versions, what is the problem to use the equivalent system interface on XP?

DirectShow support is doable but said to be discarded even if there were patches (Bug 435339)

Security is the concern? Don't enable it by default, warn the user and let him decide. Why do you forbid it to be used?

ffmpeg on Windows is already supported, but H.264 is plainly disabled (Bug 1214462)

Actually I'd like to see an option to use all system-available codecs on all platforms or a pluggable architecture for them, but that won't be done for sure and I'm not waiting for it. Though wouldn't a plugin architecture for at least H.264 be something reasonable?

Summarizing, why can't we have native H.264 on XP? Almost every other system either has it by default or at least it can be enabled in some way, but there is not an option to enable it on XP. Is it a policy to make XP an obsoleted platform for the web?

The latest hope was Adobe GMP, although a proprietary blob, it would get the job done, and it was dropped, even as an about:config option, despite it was working for some users (Bug 1288582)

So, any plans to roll-out something else before the switch to ESR? Maybe I'm missing something? I'd like to. Not much hope for it though. Waiting for your answers.