5 ms·

Is it too far fetched to wonder if Nokia is fighting on behalf of MS? In the end Nokias CEO comes from MS, Nokia is very dependant on MS nowadays and MS has a s

by buster 14y ago

Is it too far fetched to wonder if Nokia is fighting on behalf of MS? In the end Nokias CEO comes from MS, Nokia is very dependant on MS nowadays and MS has a strong interest in H264, is a member of MPEG-LA and earns money from every H264 license? All that software patent bullshit needs to stop, already, it's sickening!! It's the <video> tag discussion all over again. Why can't we have royalty-free, free-for-all codecs in an OPEN worldwide standard?! Because stupid companies like Nokia, MS or Apple are NOT acting on behalf of the users but on behalf of their own income. And don't start with "but h264 has so much better quality!" No normal person could tell the difference between a proper vp8 encoded FullHD youtube video and a h264 one, it's not like there are glaring differences!

taligent 14y ago
Do you honestly think Nokia, MS or Apple could care less about the tiny royalties that come from H.264 licensing ? And if they did why provide free APIs for developers ? And the reason H.264 is successful is not because of its superior quality. It's because MPEG-LA has companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Canon, Nikon which means H.264 is supported from capture to editing to publishing to viewing.
- jahewson 14y ago
  Probably not, but they might be interested in preventing the progress of WebRTC, which could threaten Skype.
- buster 14y ago
  Do you have a source for "tiny royalties"? How much does MPEG-LA earn in a year? A few millions per licensing company here, a few hundred thousand per video site there.. It adds up!
  - anon1385 14y ago
    Apple and Microsoft also ship a lot of products that use H.264 and thus have to pay for their use of H.264, so I don't think it is at all obvious that is it a profit centre for them. Microsoft at least have said they lose money on it, and I doubt the situation for Apple is much different: Though they have patents in the H.264 pool that MPEG LA licenses, Microsoft has said it pays MPEG LA twice as much in royalties to ship H.264-enabled products than it receives in royalty payments back. And Apple has only a single patent in the H.264 pool, so it appears its interests in H.264 and MPEG LA are not directly financial. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20038615-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20038615-264.html
    - buster 14y ago
      Yes, and i should trust in that source? haha, of course! The point is that the whole conglomerate of companies is enough power to prevent competition and innovation (from the outside), to dictate prices, to dominate a whole market with whatever fits your companies strategy best. This constellation has never been good for the consumer. Nobody guarantees you that they're holding back with the fees until they can establish h.265 as the new defacto standard and then start raising fees, because eventually we'll have the same situation again as nowadays (hard decoders only support h264/265, etc etc). Again, there will be no competition, in a few years every video conference will be h264/5, every web video wil be h264, every Bluray, virtually every video.. If you have that kind of dominance you can do whatever the fuck you like. Like raising the fees and leeching the money out of companies because there is no choice. Atleast that's what i would do ;)
      - taligent 14y ago
        Except that the H.264 standard has been fantastic for consumers. I can get video from my Canon DSLR or Android phone, edit it in Final Cut Pro, save it to YouTube and watch it on my iPad. Or use the huge array of competitors e.g. Nikon, Premiere, Vimeo, Nexus 10. You seem to be arguing that standards prevent competition. When in fact they cause it to flourish.
        buster 14y ago
        You don't seem to understand that i am all for open standards but against a monopoly, against so called "standards" that are defended by use of patents instead of innovation. The MPEG-LA is forcing a standard on people by misuse of patents. I'm certainly very much pro-standard! The same as i am against Office Open XML (a standard as well) but for OpenDocument Format (yet another standard). To put it into one sentence: A standard should NEVER ever be controlled/represented/defended by a group of companies with monetary interests. If you have a monetary interest in upholding a standard it is clear that you will try to prevent competition.
        cooldeal 14y ago
  - taligent 14y ago
    Apple has 170 billion in liquid assets and annual revenues of 100+ billion. Given that licensing isn't broken out or even mentioned in their market conference calls gives you a pretty good indication that it is a pretty insignificant amount.
antninja 14y ago
It's quite probable that those companies are pushing for MPEG4 because they paid millions to licence it and they don't want to pay for another codec. There's no way to know if the promised patent-free codecs are really patent-free.
- taligent 14y ago
  From that list Apple, Microsoft and Sony are licensors. Hence are very much key members of MPEG-LA. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx
w0utert 14y ago
>> And don't start with "but h264 has so much better quality!" No normal person could tell the difference between a proper vp8 encoded FullHD youtube video and a h264 one, it's not like there are glaring differences! The glaring difference is in the ubiquitous hardware encoder/decoder support, which in itself is more than enough reason to prefer H264 anywhere. I'd be really happy if everyone should finally stop beating the dead horse that is VP8, because as it stands it never served any other purpose than channeling unfounded bias against H264 because it is not 'free' enough for some people to comprehend, even though neither industry nor consumers have ever made a big problem out of this. A bit like no-one ever bothered to complain about the fact that there are millions of other technologies in widespread use that aren't royalty-free. The fear-mongering and FUD about MPEG-LA as if they are some kind of extortionist codec mafia really has been mind-boggling from day 1.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Yes, the time that Apple refused to release the new version of Quicktime until the MPEG-LA retracted their idiotic, web-incompatible licence regime for the AAC audio codec simply didn't happen. Nor did the uproar of Chinese DVD manufacturers who saw the value of IP in a DVD player rise to nearly half the cost of production and put many out of business. And no consumer has ever complained about DRM or region-coding on their video content that rely on their patents as Hook IP to be enforced in player devices.
- buster 14y ago
  There will never be an alternative the way it is today. One of the reasons the MPEG-LA exists is to prevent and supress competition, don't you think? The whole concept is bullshit. I tell you how i see it: In a world without MPEG-LA (even without h264) there would still be good video codecs. There are plenty out there (e.g. VP8, VP9, Dirac and what not). They were created like many other codecs and standards and still they can exist, there is no need for the MPEG-LA! The only purpose the MPEG-LA has is to prevent competition (and thus prevent choice for the endconsumer, for me!) from entering the market. And even without the MPEG-LA and the licensing model (and the obvious patent trolling behaviour in the past) there is enough money to make for codec implementations and content creators. Why can't it be that way, that we have a "free" codec (as i've said, there are alternatives) without the licensing and yet we can still have a whole industry around them. Hardware chips could support a free codec and h264. The W3C could recommend a free codec for HTML5 video and webrtc. Software companies that write encoding/decoding software could even earn more money (no fees) and would thrive on competition and not rely on suppression/patent trolling. I think that everyone (meaning the customer!) would win, if the MPEG-LA (and other patent trolls) would be shut down, you'll have a hard time to convince me otherwise. I couldn't care less about the "hardware decoder/encoder support" argument, because it's a symptom of all that MPEG-LA crap, not a reason. Everything the MPEG-LA works for is to make sure there will only be that one video codec. They will also make sure that only H265 will get enough hardware support (see, 2 codecs in one chip, is this even possible you say!?).. And on it goes, it's a kind of monopoly and one that knows how to play the game and keep earning money. The point that there are "other technologies in widespread use that aren't royalty-free." is not an argument, it's just a sad fact. In general there are alternatives available and in general i don't see such a patent abusing behaviour in other areas.

by buster 14y ago

taligent 14y ago

Do you honestly think Nokia, MS or Apple could care less about the tiny royalties that come from H.264 licensing ? And if they did why provide free APIs for developers ? And the reason H.264 is successful is not because of its superior quality. It's because MPEG-LA has companies like Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Canon, Nikon which means H.264 is supported from capture to editing to publishing to viewing.

jahewson 14y ago
Probably not, but they might be interested in preventing the progress of WebRTC, which could threaten Skype.
buster 14y ago
Do you have a source for "tiny royalties"? How much does MPEG-LA earn in a year? A few millions per licensing company here, a few hundred thousand per video site there.. It adds up!
- anon1385 14y ago
  Apple and Microsoft also ship a lot of products that use H.264 and thus have to pay for their use of H.264, so I don't think it is at all obvious that is it a profit centre for them. Microsoft at least have said they lose money on it, and I doubt the situation for Apple is much different: Though they have patents in the H.264 pool that MPEG LA licenses, Microsoft has said it pays MPEG LA twice as much in royalties to ship H.264-enabled products than it receives in royalty payments back. And Apple has only a single patent in the H.264 pool, so it appears its interests in H.264 and MPEG LA are not directly financial. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20038615-264.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20038615-264.html
  - buster 14y ago
    Yes, and i should trust in that source? haha, of course! The point is that the whole conglomerate of companies is enough power to prevent competition and innovation (from the outside), to dictate prices, to dominate a whole market with whatever fits your companies strategy best. This constellation has never been good for the consumer. Nobody guarantees you that they're holding back with the fees until they can establish h.265 as the new defacto standard and then start raising fees, because eventually we'll have the same situation again as nowadays (hard decoders only support h264/265, etc etc). Again, there will be no competition, in a few years every video conference will be h264/5, every web video wil be h264, every Bluray, virtually every video.. If you have that kind of dominance you can do whatever the fuck you like. Like raising the fees and leeching the money out of companies because there is no choice. Atleast that's what i would do ;)
    - taligent 14y ago
      Except that the H.264 standard has been fantastic for consumers. I can get video from my Canon DSLR or Android phone, edit it in Final Cut Pro, save it to YouTube and watch it on my iPad. Or use the huge array of competitors e.g. Nikon, Premiere, Vimeo, Nexus 10. You seem to be arguing that standards prevent competition. When in fact they cause it to flourish.
      - buster 14y ago
        You don't seem to understand that i am all for open standards but against a monopoly, against so called "standards" that are defended by use of patents instead of innovation. The MPEG-LA is forcing a standard on people by misuse of patents. I'm certainly very much pro-standard! The same as i am against Office Open XML (a standard as well) but for OpenDocument Format (yet another standard). To put it into one sentence: A standard should NEVER ever be controlled/represented/defended by a group of companies with monetary interests. If you have a monetary interest in upholding a standard it is clear that you will try to prevent competition.
        cooldeal 14y ago
- taligent 14y ago
  Apple has 170 billion in liquid assets and annual revenues of 100+ billion. Given that licensing isn't broken out or even mentioned in their market conference calls gives you a pretty good indication that it is a pretty insignificant amount.

antninja 14y ago

It's quite probable that those companies are pushing for MPEG4 because they paid millions to licence it and they don't want to pay for another codec. There's no way to know if the promised patent-free codecs are really patent-free.

taligent 14y ago
From that list Apple, Microsoft and Sony are licensors. Hence are very much key members of MPEG-LA. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx

w0utert 14y ago

>> And don't start with "but h264 has so much better quality!" No normal person could tell the difference between a proper vp8 encoded FullHD youtube video and a h264 one, it's not like there are glaring differences! The glaring difference is in the ubiquitous hardware encoder/decoder support, which in itself is more than enough reason to prefer H264 anywhere. I'd be really happy if everyone should finally stop beating the dead horse that is VP8, because as it stands it never served any other purpose than channeling unfounded bias against H264 because it is not 'free' enough for some people to comprehend, even though neither industry nor consumers have ever made a big problem out of this. A bit like no-one ever bothered to complain about the fact that there are millions of other technologies in widespread use that aren't royalty-free. The fear-mongering and FUD about MPEG-LA as if they are some kind of extortionist codec mafia really has been mind-boggling from day 1.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Yes, the time that Apple refused to release the new version of Quicktime until the MPEG-LA retracted their idiotic, web-incompatible licence regime for the AAC audio codec simply didn't happen. Nor did the uproar of Chinese DVD manufacturers who saw the value of IP in a DVD player rise to nearly half the cost of production and put many out of business. And no consumer has ever complained about DRM or region-coding on their video content that rely on their patents as Hook IP to be enforced in player devices.
buster 14y ago
There will never be an alternative the way it is today. One of the reasons the MPEG-LA exists is to prevent and supress competition, don't you think? The whole concept is bullshit. I tell you how i see it: In a world without MPEG-LA (even without h264) there would still be good video codecs. There are plenty out there (e.g. VP8, VP9, Dirac and what not). They were created like many other codecs and standards and still they can exist, there is no need for the MPEG-LA! The only purpose the MPEG-LA has is to prevent competition (and thus prevent choice for the endconsumer, for me!) from entering the market. And even without the MPEG-LA and the licensing model (and the obvious patent trolling behaviour in the past) there is enough money to make for codec implementations and content creators. Why can't it be that way, that we have a "free" codec (as i've said, there are alternatives) without the licensing and yet we can still have a whole industry around them. Hardware chips could support a free codec and h264. The W3C could recommend a free codec for HTML5 video and webrtc. Software companies that write encoding/decoding software could even earn more money (no fees) and would thrive on competition and not rely on suppression/patent trolling. I think that everyone (meaning the customer!) would win, if the MPEG-LA (and other patent trolls) would be shut down, you'll have a hard time to convince me otherwise. I couldn't care less about the "hardware decoder/encoder support" argument, because it's a symptom of all that MPEG-LA crap, not a reason. Everything the MPEG-LA works for is to make sure there will only be that one video codec. They will also make sure that only H265 will get enough hardware support (see, 2 codecs in one chip, is this even possible you say!?).. And on it goes, it's a kind of monopoly and one that knows how to play the game and keep earning money. The point that there are "other technologies in widespread use that aren't royalty-free." is not an argument, it's just a sad fact. In general there are alternatives available and in general i don't see such a patent abusing behaviour in other areas.