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Patent Group new fees for 4K H.265/HEVC

Tom Chase

Tom Chase

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***Sorry if this isn't the right area to post this***

But curious on thoughts of what this will do to 4K deliverables and streaming. Since we are shooting in at least 4K and now as bandwidth expands to making 4K streaming/UHD a reality.

http://www.cnet.com/…/patent-group-raises-new-fees-uncert…/…

Would love feed back.

Tommy
 
That will cause problems. Hopefully VP9 applies enough pressure to limit the fees. MPEG 4 ASP was pretty much DOA because the license fees were unreasonable, which caused Microsoft to create what eventually became VC-1. VC-1 forced MPEG LA to offer reasonable terms for H.264. This includes a cap on annual fees. MPEG-2 has no cap. I think h.264 is 40 cents a unit while MPEG-2 is over $2 a unit on decoders.
 
What if... Red came out with a free redcode codec for coding and playback that is better than H.265 and isn't bound by fees or anything.
If Red cares about 4K distribution and image quality, it would be in their interest :thumbsup:
 
RED has a finite number of resources. In my extensive testing, REDRAY was not in the same league as HEVC. Too many compression artifacts in RR, even at the 36 Mbps bitrate. It had a small window where it could have done well in the market, but HEVC is here now. Sadly the 2nd patent pool could screw things up with HEVC. VP9 is in the same boat in that MPEG-LA keeps talking about forming a patent pool for VP8 and VP9. VP8 infringed on several H.264 patents. Google can claim royalty free, but they don't indemnify anyone. Kind of a use at your own risk situation.

If you went to a desert island, knowing nothing about image compression, and came back two years later with a new CODEC, you would infringe on someone's patents. :) DCT and DCT-like (VC-1, H.264 and H.265) have been patented 6 ways from Sunday.
 
I'm sying that they could develop a new redcode which rivals that of VP9 and HEVC. Putting pressure on patented codecs will push redcode into a whole new level. I'm not talking about redray, but a redcode that's software only, free to use, free to download. Something that when installed is enabled in software like Adobe Media Encoder, GPU accelerated.

No one can make anything today without screwing with some patent without even knowing so the choice is either to take a leap of faith or just don't do anything at all.
 
FWIW, there are some stakeholders in all this who would like to delay UHD/4K as long as possible. Are they behind this fresh patent claim? Straight up trolling by lawyers? Either way, it's just one more hurdle - and there's plenty already!

Cheers - #19
 
I wish they would delay UHD Blu-ray. They should wait on results from the recently formed UHD Alliance. UHD Blu-ray feels like it was conceived without much studio input. Lots of mistakes, which could hurt the format. Frankly I would much rather have 100 Mbps UHD Blu-ray than 15 Mbps UHD Netflix. :) HDR is the real area of improvement. UHD Blu-ray made both Dolby Vision and Philips HDR optional unfortunately. Its really a bad time to buy a UHD display unless you are okay buying another one in the next 18 months.

Rant off. :)
 
If the internet revolution has taught us nothing else, it's that piracy thrives when costs of using legitimate media/codecs/etc are onerous and unjustified.

Frankly, this licensing power play is so poorly thought out, I have to wonder if it's just a lot of smoke to slow down the UHD train. There are plenty of large stakeholders in the mix who would like to delay and/or cripple better quality video distribution schemes so they can keep milking the status quo. I can't prove it, most conspiracies are well hidden by design, but it sure smells like a tactical ploy to me.

Cheers - #19
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
If the internet revolution has taught us nothing else, it's that piracy thrives when costs of using legitimate media/codecs/etc are onerous and unjustified.

Frankly, this licensing power play is so poorly thought out, I have to wonder if it's just a lot of smoke to slow down the UHD train. There are plenty of large stakeholders in the mix who would like to delay and/or cripple better quality video distribution schemes so they can keep milking the status quo. I can't prove it, most conspiracies are well hidden by design, but it sure smells like a tactical ploy to me.

Cheers - #19
Click to expand...

I can dig that rumination. From what the "piracy" folks are saying, they are not interested in HEVC at all, somewhat interested in VP9 because it is royalty-free and some won't touch it because it's "corporate", and foaming at the mouth for Daala (HEVC competitor from open-source developers) due to it's open-source origins and free price. VP9 is still largely a mystery at this point and only has 3-4 hardware decoders with questionable support in the next-gen GPUs despite assurances from all the players that they support VP9, HEVC has full support with current and upcoming GPUs and a ton of hardware decoders from the Chinese chip makers, and Daala is sitting on the sidelines, still simmering in the labs. I'd love to see VP9 take off because it's free and it has unlimited Google money behind it, but getting good and well-performing hardware encoding is not something that seems to be on that table yet.
 
The issue with VP9 is that is DOES contain IP from others and they have not yet asked for money. Any day someone can form a VP9 patent pool and come after you. Google does not indemnify anyone against IP claims. If it becomes popular, I would fully expect a patent pool. Google did not fare so well against MS when the tried to charge Microsoft a lot of money for a RAND(H.264) patent while charging others MUCH less.

The only thing that would make VP9 useful is helping control the patent prices on HEVC. This is what VC-1 did for H.264.
 
My theory is that 'HEVC Advance' is just a way for Technicolor to pretend their stock has more value than it really does. If they can point at H265 adoption and say "We own a patent on HEVC and our license fee is worth $1,000,000,000 at 2% gross media sales." then their stock holders will go "OOoo, Ahhhhhh, look at how much our company is worth on paper!" It's a facade to look more valuable than they really are. MPEG-LA is confident that they have total patent coverage on HEVC and I believe they have enough lawyers to defend their patent coverage against Technicolor et all. Prime Focus is doing this right now too with their nonsense patents on 3D reprojection. "We own a patent that is necessary for 3D Conversion, a 100 million dollar a year industry!" Sure... they technically have a patent on some key stereo conversion techniques but that's not stopping anyone from ignoring it because it's nonsense. Companies toot the exclusive and patented value of their portfolio to prop up their stock price and then everyone just ignores them and licenses a reasonably priced option or in the case of bs patents, ignores them. I'm surprised 'HEVC Advance' didn't ask an even more ludicrous number so that their member's theoretical value wouldn't be even higher.
 
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