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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

The subject of the article was the "fight for patent-unencumbered media codecs is almost won". To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent protected formats. Netflix is still having to deal with patents and now they had to dedicate more resources to support an additional format.

Large content providers like YouTube or Netflix really don't care about the patent and have the resources for storage and encoding multiple formats. Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats.

They still have to support patented formats and now they have to spend money on encoding and storage on yet another codec if the want to use VP9. What's the benefit of supporting two formats? One that is supported everywhere and one that isn't it?

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> To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent protected formats.

And that's what's happening. VP9 is royalty-free and AV1 will be royalty-free.

> Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats.

So it's good that both YouTube and Netflix support VP9 and AV1. It helps make royalty-free video formats commonplace on the web.

> What's the benefit of supporting two formats?

It's worth it for the bandwidth saving. VP9 significantly outperforms H.264.

And that's what's happening. VP9 is royalty-free and AV1 will be royalty-free

Who are these content providers that are "abandoning" H.264?

so it's good that both Netflix and YouTube support VP9 and Av1

Good for who? End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free format. They just care about the content being available on their platform.

> End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free format.

This is a tired argument. The same argument was attempted when VP8 was new, and when VP9 was new, and now again with AV1. I'm sure the same, worn-out ground will be revisited when AV2 comes along.

End users don't care that TCP\IP is royalty-free or that HTTP and HTML are royalty-free or that any of the other commonly used formats and protocols are royalty-free. They don't care because they don't understand the issues.

Developers care. Builders care. I care. I want to implement video on the internet for any use case without having to consult a lawyer just to understand the licensing implications of doing so. VP9 and AV1 make that possible. VP9 and AV1 normalize video on the internet by making it royalty-free like all the other internet formats and protocols.

Content companies and hardware companies and software companies don't join AOMedia for the fun of it. They join because it's the practical choice:

http://aomedia.org/about-us/

There may be a few hundred thousand of developers that do but there are hundreds of millions of users that just want their stuff to work.

Profit is in the users, not in the developers

But you've got to produce before you can consume and you've got to deliver to the consumer. AV1's licensing reduces costs and AV1's lower bitrate delivers better picture quality earlier with less bandwidth.

The choice isn't AV1 or users. It's AV1 and users.

How does it "reduce costs" if you still have to support both?

And I can't find how much licensing actual costs for H.264.

If there is a demand, content will come, I doubt the difference in cost made by the licensing fees are going to mske a difference.

No, but potential for bandwidth caps with fees for going in light of the removal of network neutrality legislation might tip the balance in the favor of the codec that looks better at a lower bitrate.

No, but potential for bandwidth caps with fees for going in light of the removal of network neutrality legislation might tip the balance in the favor of the codec that looks better at a lower bitrate.

What does that have to do with patents and why people should care?

Products already exists. That's what users consume. That's also why users don't care about technological developments unless those technological developments improve user's experience, not make it more difficult for the users.

I think the problem is that it limits competition. The established companies with deep pockets have an advantage if royalties have to be paid.

This is bad for users, whether they realize it or not. They end up with fewer (and potentially worse) options.

The cost for a creating, hosting and streaming video is huge. If a new entrant has the funding to create and host compelling video, I doubt that the minuscule cost of royalties will make or break them.

The positive affect on large content providers is non existent when they have to support both and negligible as far as cost even when they do.

It doesn't really have an affect on small content producers. I do live streams for a non profit. We pay one time for Wirecast and the Black Magic hardware. Pay a neglible cost to send the livestream to our provider and they broadcast it. iOS users at least can view from the browser using HLS. We also send another stream to Facebook. How does H.264 patents affect us?

You don't have to "consult a lawyer", unless you are creating your own codec. You pay the licensing fee which in the grand scheme of things is lower than all of your other costs - hosting, development tools, internet costs, etc. and you're done.

Note that even if H.264 may be free for your use case[1], HEVC is not. For HEVC, you must pay per title or subscriber, if you are content producer.

[1] Which I wouldn't be so sure. Many H.264-using devices come with disclaimer, that they are not licensed for professional use and that you may need your own license. As usual, consult your lawyer. The point of VP9/AV1 is, that this is not necessary.

A lot of UGC is video. If uploading (or just storing) your videos in an industry-standard and very efficient format for free can get you in hot water, or require shady downloads of cracked / banned software, users are going to be unhappy, and would cry and protest. Remember the early days of mp3, or DivX / XviD, banning of VLC, etc.

You get a much wider and more loyal user base if you're smart enough not to enforce such silliness anymore.

End users pay hundreds of dollars in royalties to companies for their electronics. Get rid of royalties and the technology race to the bottom will pass those savings on to consumers.

"Hundreds of dollars"? Source?

I don't think that's out of line.

I was working on networked audio/video devices back in ~2005 when that space was pretty new. We had a line-item BOM cost for encoder/decoder licenses that was not chump-change, which got passed on to customers.

I can only imagine costs have gotten much worse since then. When you take into account all the electronics your average connected person owns: phone, tablet, TV, AppleTV/GoogleTV/Roku, computer OS, etc., it really starts to add up.

Even if the parent poster is overstating and it's on the order of $50 per person, that's a ton of wasted money when you consider the total cost.

MPEG-2 used to cost $2.50 per device. MPEG-4 is another 25 cents or so. Add another $2.00 for HVEC. MP3 was $0.75-$5.00 per unit. Each video you stream from Netflix or Hulu costs a few cents royalty. Royalties for such things used to be even higher before the threat of unpatented codecs dropped prices (eg, h.264 becoming free to compete with vp9).

Consider all the electronics you've owned over the past 20-25 years. You undoubtedly paid a dollar or two for less complex ones and much more for more complex devices.

> End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free format. They just care about the content being available on their platform.

End users do care about the cost of their devices. Patent-free formats lower that cost. And patent encumbrances just make it more difficult and costly for manufacturers to include support; sometimes some formats get left out due to cost.

I certainly agree that end users don't care about patents, but they care about some of the practical problems that patent-encumbered formats cause down the line. These are usually not showstoppers, but they help cause customer confusion and sticker shock.

Having to support both formats in the short- or medium-term is definitely annoying and costly for manufacturers, but if we do actually win the open format war (I think the OP is a little overly optimistic there), that problem goes away.

H.264 is a legacy codec from the VP8 generation and is only needed to support legacy platforms. Current Internet encodes for modern devices should be VP9 (nobody's going to step into the HEVC patent pool minefield), and future encodes should be AV1.

>The subject of the article was the "fight for patent-unencumbered media codecs is almost won". To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent protected formats.

Eventually they will, the only missing piece for AV1 to become the de facto successor to h264 was Apple, with them onboard AV1 will cover all of web and mobile. I mean look at the companies behind AV1:

Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, AMD, ARM, IBM, NVidia, Broadcom, and that's about HALF the list.

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