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Comment by phh | Hacker News Reader

> Doesn't Netflix use AV1 exclusively to stream it's contents?

And double its electrical power impact by going from hardware decoding to software decoding? I certainly hope not. (Anyway on TVs, it's impossible to do in software decoding, both because the CPUs are very bad, and even with literally 0 CPU you can't access 4K HDR surfaces)

> that HEVC will be replaced with AV1 in Netflix.

I personally would wait for AV1 to be court-tested before eagerly switching to it. Unlike dear ol' Theora, AV1 wasn't designed to not be patent encumbered. One would even argue the opposite. It is "patent free" only because Google claimed it was, and we're hoping noone will have the will to go against Google. Broadcom might have them.

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> It is "patent free" only because Google claimed it was

You're confusing two separate issues: patents and the licensing of those patents.

AV1 is not "patent free" at all. There are plenty of patents that pertain to AV1 owned by the Alliance for Open Media. AOMedia gives you a patent license to use AV1 royalty-free:

https://aomedia.org/license/patent-license/

https://aomedia.org/press%20releases/the-alliance-for-open-m...

What's happening separately is that patent licensing organizations are forming their own patent pools in an attempt to seek rent from existing and future AV1 users. Their claim is that they have patents essential to AV1 and you must pay them a licensing fee.

Sisvel is trying it on: https://www.sisvel.com/licensing-programmes/audio-and-video-...

And so is Avanci: https://www.avanci.com/video/

They characterize this is as providing AV1 implementers the "opportunity" to minimize the risk of being sued:

https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art...

These grubby patent pool organizations are the practical reason why it's better to stick with royalty-free formats and protocols on the internet.

And why more work must to go into making sure internet audio and video formats are and remain royalty-free.

At least from face value it seems the value of those patents is exactly to fight back patent pools organizations, at part of the AOM stipulation is that if someone tries to sue over AV1 patents they would lose access to every patent holder portfolio (for AOM that would mean Google, Apple, Amazon and many others tech giants). Though it seems that still won't stop everyone.

I’m all for finding technical solutions for legal problems usually but the issue here is that you cannot keep changing codecs to escape patents because the algorithms are etched into the silicon itself. So it’s basically impossible to have a royalty free encoding, unless you’re willing to use encodings that are 20 years old. This is a legal problem that needs a legal solution.

The legal solution is exactly what AO Media has done: own the patents that pertain to your video format and license those patents on royalty-free terms.

Sisvel's and Avanci's claims are essentially "Haha, you missed some! Sux to be you! Pay us!"

And the legal remedies for that are to test those claims in court and win, or to buy Sisvel and Avanci off with a settlement.

What if Sysvel and Avanci are (legally) found to be in the right and actually have legitimate patents, and refuse to add their patents to the AOM patent pool? (Why would they agree to that anyway? surely individually licensing AV1 patents would be much more profitable?)

Do you think we should just make do with H.264 for another 20 years, or do you think there ought to be a legal solution to the patent mess we're in?

> Why would they agree to that anyway? surely individually licensing AV1 patents would be much more profitable?

They won't agree to that. They are already not agreeing to that.

The two options to keep AV1 royalty-free are their claims are found to be invalid in court or they get bought off via a settlement.

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