back to article Royalty-free web vid spec sets sail with Apple's help

A proposed standard to stream video online smoothly, regardless of network conditions, has been pushed forward with some rather unexpected patent-holder help. MPEG-DASH was approved in a vote by ISO national member bodies as a way to stream media over HTTP. Publication of the standard is expected "shortly". MPEG-DASH could …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Royalty-free but patent-protected isn't enough

    for the hardcore Free/Open Source bunch. And does it have DRM, because the content providers won't use it otherwise?

  2. petur
    FAIL

    Forget it

    If this comes from MPEG-LA I don't believe a word of this. They try to go after one 'open' codec and then propose another one of their own? Wait for the hidden agenda...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Exactly

      Also, Apple is in on it - and they are against any thing proposed by Google, so this looks like a barely hidden effort to torpedo VP8 and OGG. The time to end once and for all this idiotic patent craziness is long past.

      1. Armando 123

        I dunno, Apple protects their patents vigorously but they've been pretty good partners on a lot of open source projects: cups, darwin, gcc/g++, etc etc etc.

        Apple has been pushing H.264 for at least five years now. I recall a Keynote where Jobs showed its scaling abilities and it was phenomenal.

    2. CheesyTheClown
      Devil

      Ummmm... so what's the issue?

      Really... how can anyone lose on this? H.264 is not a bad spec, it's actually pretty good if a bit bloated. MPEG-LA is basically killing a pile of patents that have impeded the open community from using a lot of technologies in their code.

      Is WebM a better codec... nope... it's really about the same. It does some pretty cool stuff though. But by making IVC open, now we can do things like make a version of x264 with WebM included and even produce a hybrid which borrows the best of both.

      While I'm a strong believer that a standardized codec is a stupid idea across the board, I think this is a great step in the right direction.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Really... how can anyone lose on this?"

        Oh dear!

        "MPEG-LA is basically killing a pile of patents that have impeded the open community from using a lot of technologies in their code."

        Are you sure? What we're likely to see is that they say, "You can use our intellectual property for free-of-charge deployments subject to certain conditions." And those conditions will exclude stuff like the software being genuinely free/open, and stuff which enhances the techniques they claim to own.

        If your concerns end at the horizon of "free downloads" then you're not going to complain very much about more shiny Web video, at least until the codec deck is shuffled once again and those "free downloads" don't work any more (and there's nothing you can reasonably do to fix it).

        And I'd trust the MPEG-LA people about as far as if I stuck the planet Jupiter on a bottle rocket and set it off to see how far it went in one minute. Not only are they practically running an extortion racket, but they've also been involved in setting up shell companies to threaten people, Intellectual Vultures style.

  3. quartzie
    Meh

    The patent-free dream

    As much as I'd like to applaud the developers' intention to start with a new, patent-free design, most of the currently known video and image compression techniques, including e.g. motion compensation, prediction and entropy coding are sadly all patented by the current MPEG-LA members and/or others.

    It would be extremely unlikely for a team of developers to come up with a completely novel approach to video compression, especially if they are well versed in the current technology and therefore blinded by the known approaches.

    The minefield provided by current patents in the area is nearly impossible to avoid, as proven by projects like VC-1 (which, sadly, resembles most modern codecs to the minute detail).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll never run or own Apple things

    I'll just stop watching web video! Ha! Take that Apple you evil gits!

  5. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Happy

    How to gauge if a standard is working or not....

    When I see at least 30% of video torrents using it, then I know it's worthwhile!

  6. Peter Galbavy
    Black Helicopters

    Whatever happened to .. DIRAC ?

    Well? The BBC pushed this as a patent free codec - but it did require lots of CPU back then - but now ?

  7. 2cent

    Probably stunted result

    I suspect that if this comes to pass, you will get free product for showing, but will be stunted.

    It will look fine on the small screen, but junk on the large.

    "Special" licensed hardware will be required for larger formats at 1080.

    Patent holders and hardware manufacturers will profit on closed systems that are actually worth seeing. Naturally Google will be left out in the cold, if at all possible.

    Same thoughts on creation engine.

    If it's not going to be unencumbered, at least let it be interesting. Say, like the voxel renderer.

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