Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of a tangential matter. The Rasberry Pi has a built in hardware decoder for MPEG-2. You can pay a licensing fee and enable the decoder. This is despite the fact that the relevant patents on MPEG-2 have expired in the US and much of the world[1]. The issue is that there are still active patents in Malaysia[2].

[1] https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/939

[2] https://bryanquigley.com/pages/mpeg2-patent-tracker.html

View on HN

> The Rasberry Pi has a built in hardware decoder for MPEG-2.

Well the older models did, yes. I don't believe the Raspberry Pi 4 has one anymore. (And the CPU can probably handle it just fine as well)

I regularly use software decoding on the 3B+ for (legally) recorded over-the-air (ATSC) MPEG2 content and it handles 1080i@30 and 720p@60 just fine. For some shows I watch at 150% speed and it still handles it.

That second link is interesting and perhaps needs to be updated given that it says:

> Please be aware to renew your patent before this date is reached, or else your patent will become expired. 14 Sep 2020

(and earlier dates for the other 2 patents). Following the link to the MPEG LA site, though, indicates that they believe the Malaysian patents are still valid as of October 2020.

https://www.mpegla.com/programs/mpeg-2/patent-list/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com