On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:37:30 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'Here's a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube. That's because about 4 in 5 videos on the web today rely on a patented technology called the H.264 video codec.'
I wonder who is paying that fee, though. Aren’t most of the YouTube users on no-charge accounts? Fun fact: MPEG-LA (which manages the patent pool for H.264) was basically strong-armed into letting most people use decoders for little or no charge, while the same did not apply to the older MPEG-2 video codec (as used in DVD-Video). You might remember that Microsoft brought in a charge for its DVD-Video playing capability in Windows, rather than bundling it in the base price, while the same did not apply to H.264 playback capability.
'Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge.'
It’s actually remarkable that no one has stepped up with some “submarine” patents to claim that this codec infringes, and demand payments. Of course, that could still happen. MPEG-LA tried to solicit such action over Google’s VP8 codec, back in the day <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110304/02364313363/justice-department-investigating-mpeg-la-antitrust-violations-over-vp8-patent-threats.shtml>. That attracted an antitrust investigation by the DOJ. Hopefully that acted as a discouragement to any future similar protection rackets.
'The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs -- about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study.'
What? Better than H.265, aka HEVC?? Now *that* would be a major step forward...