3 ms·

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 dev

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
        > A standard should NEVER ever be controlled/represented/defended by a group of companies with monetary interests. You mean like VP8/WebM by Google?
        cromwellian 14y ago
        Once something is unencumbered, there is nothing to stop forking. For example, Mozilla could take VP8, use a new container, evolve the codec, etc. There's the difference. You try and fork H.264 you get sued. The fundamental freedom in "open" is freedom to fork. Everyone forgets that.
        buster 14y ago
        VP8 and WebM are formats, not standards. Interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM
- 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.

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
        > A standard should NEVER ever be controlled/represented/defended by a group of companies with monetary interests. You mean like VP8/WebM by Google?
        cromwellian 14y ago
        Once something is unencumbered, there is nothing to stop forking. For example, Mozilla could take VP8, use a new container, evolve the codec, etc. There's the difference. You try and fork H.264 you get sued. The fundamental freedom in "open" is freedom to fork. Everyone forgets that.
        buster 14y ago
        VP8 and WebM are formats, not standards. Interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM
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.