4 ms·

I'm not sure how you think for-profit companies like Mozilla, Google or Apple would get away with shipping 'ha ha I tricked you!' patent circumventions to a bil

I'm not sure how you think for-profit companies like Mozilla, Google or Apple would get away with shipping 'ha ha I tricked you!' patent circumventions to a billion people. It's not like Audacity. Keep in mind that Firefox AFAIK still relies on OS codecs for h264 because shipping it themselves is such a difficult proposition due to patents. And on Windows, if you want native HEVC or AV1 playback you have to buy it from the store, it doesn't ship with the OS.

jay_kyburz 4y ago
On my new laptop, whenever opening a h265 I would get message from the media player saying I can buy HEVC for $3 or something. But if you follow the link below to the Windows store, you can download it for free! ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq Found out on Howtogeek https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-codecs-on-windows-10-for-h.265-video/ https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Yeah, I had to buy it. I suspect maybe depending on your manufacturer your machine already has a license?
colinsane 4y ago
maybe i misunderstood, then. i thought that HEVC licensing was paid for by the hardware vendor, and hence acted as a broad tax even if you’re not using HEVC, or using GPUs in a HPC context, etc (and unnecessarily raises the barrier of entry to new HW vendors, etc). but if Windows users are individually paying those licenses, that’s probably not the case. i guess the worry then is that HEVC crowds out AV1/others, and this Chrome change is setting the stage for it to become a broad tax on video? i could buy that angle.
- thayne 4y ago
  There was a recent kerfuffle about Fedora removing support for hardware accelerated H.265 from their distribution of mesa because of threat of patent litigation. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API. That would also seem to suggest that the OS has to pay royalties if it uses hardware acceleration. It seems pretty strange to me that the OS/library/driver has to pay royalties just to expose access to hardware, which is where the patented technology actually exists. But I also don't understand how a video codec can be patented in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IANAL.
deleted 4y ago
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jay_kyburz 4y ago

On my new laptop, whenever opening a h265 I would get message from the media player saying I can buy HEVC for $3 or something. But if you follow the link below to the Windows store, you can download it for free! ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq Found out on Howtogeek https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-codecs-on-windows-10-for-h.265-video/ https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how-to-install-free-hevc-co...

kevingadd 4y ago
Yeah, I had to buy it. I suspect maybe depending on your manufacturer your machine already has a license?

colinsane 4y ago

maybe i misunderstood, then. i thought that HEVC licensing was paid for by the hardware vendor, and hence acted as a broad tax even if you’re not using HEVC, or using GPUs in a HPC context, etc (and unnecessarily raises the barrier of entry to new HW vendors, etc). but if Windows users are individually paying those licenses, that’s probably not the case. i guess the worry then is that HEVC crowds out AV1/others, and this Chrome change is setting the stage for it to become a broad tax on video? i could buy that angle.

thayne 4y ago
There was a recent kerfuffle about Fedora removing support for hardware accelerated H.265 from their distribution of mesa because of threat of patent litigation. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API. That would also seem to suggest that the OS has to pay royalties if it uses hardware acceleration. It seems pretty strange to me that the OS/library/driver has to pay royalties just to expose access to hardware, which is where the patented technology actually exists. But I also don't understand how a video codec can be patented in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IANAL.

deleted 4y ago

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