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Ask HN: How can the BPG format be so much better, why isn't it widely supported?
The BPG image format is so much better than all the other formats, packing better quality in smaller file sizes.
How can the difference between it and the rest be so huge, and why isn't it getting a lot of traction (that I know of)?
- mmirate 9y ago> Based on the examples shown, BPG certainly has the makings of a useful image format. The catch, however, is that it is derived from HEVC, which is patent-encumbered and royalty-bearing. That poses a major problem for free-software projects in any jurisdiction that recognizes the patents—meaning most of them.[1] I hadn't heard of this format before; after some cursory research, I believe the above quote provides a likely explanation. [1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/ https://lwn.net/Articles/625535/
- nkkollaw 9y agoI see. It's truly amazing, though. With 50k of JavaScript you can save your visitors megabytes.
- technion 9y agoThis came up a while back and I remember thinking... If you were Google or Cloudflare, and you were paying for transit on petabytes of traffic associated with images, at what point would a strategy of "buy the patent, release it, encourage people to use it" pay for itself many times over?
- nkkollaw 9y agoI thought the same thing and I can't figure it out.