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Apple partially owns the patents for MPEG4-AVC (H.264) [1] and HEVC (H.265) [2]. VP8 (WebM + WebP), VP9, and AV1 are threats to Apple's business because they'r

Apple partially owns the patents for MPEG4-AVC (H.264) [1] and HEVC (H.265) [2]. VP8 (WebM + WebP), VP9, and AV1 are threats to Apple's business because they're royalty-free. Apple wants to force companies to continue licensing H.264 and H.265. There is no technical advantage to the MPEG family over the VP family. The VP family has widespread hardware decoding support going back many years, and the latest iterations provide significantly better results than the latest MPEG family iterations. Companies like AMD, Intel, Nvidia, ARM, and Broadcom are part of the alliance that developed AV1 [3]. There doesn't appear to be any incentive for Apple to continue blocking support for the VP family other than the fact that they're a licensor of HEVC. [1]: https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/licensors/ https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/licensors/ [2]: https://www.mpegla.com/programs/hevc/licensors/ https://www.mpegla.com/programs/hevc/licensors/ [3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170614042710/https://www.xda-developers.com/av1-future-video-codecs-google-hevc/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170614042710/https://www.xda-d...

nwallin 7y ago
I've heard that angle, but it doesn't really make any sense. Samsung is also on that list, and all their SoCs since 2014 have had vp9 support. They've had vp9 support longer than HEVC. The MPEG-LA isn't so much a business model as it is a pragmatic solution to patent trolls. I'm pretty sure Apple puts money into the MPEG-LA, not the other way around.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
>Companies like AMD, Intel, Nvidia, ARM, and Broadcom are part of the alliance that developed AV1 Which Apple is also a governing member of...
peterwwillis 7y ago
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9, Sisvel said it will demand a licensing fee for VP9 from device makers. It may make more sense to adopt AV1, which is truly license and royalty free, but the encoding and decoding speeds are slower or just on par with other standards. Its only real advantage appears to be significant bitrate savings, so seemingly only streaming video providers would benefit.

nwallin 7y ago

I've heard that angle, but it doesn't really make any sense. Samsung is also on that list, and all their SoCs since 2014 have had vp9 support. They've had vp9 support longer than HEVC. The MPEG-LA isn't so much a business model as it is a pragmatic solution to patent trolls. I'm pretty sure Apple puts money into the MPEG-LA, not the other way around.

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago

>Companies like AMD, Intel, Nvidia, ARM, and Broadcom are part of the alliance that developed AV1 Which Apple is also a governing member of...

peterwwillis 7y ago

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9, Sisvel said it will demand a licensing fee for VP9 from device makers. It may make more sense to adopt AV1, which is truly license and royalty free, but the encoding and decoding speeds are slower or just on par with other standards. Its only real advantage appears to be significant bitrate savings, so seemingly only streaming video providers would benefit.