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Let's not kid ourselves. Apple isn't trying to pull people away from Flash because they're big-hearted. They're pulling people away from Flash because they want to be the gateway to Internet content, via the sweet deal with MPEG LA (who owns the H.264 patent) that will keep other players--especially open source software--out of the market.

"Following is a list of licensors of patents included in the AVC Patent Portfolio License:"

Apple.

Followed by - in alphabetical order - about twenty or so of the biggest names in tech.

Fujitsu. Hitachi. Microsoft. Mitsubishi. NTT. Panasonic. Philips. Samsung. Siemens. Sony. Toshiba. You get the idea. AVC/H.264 Licensors

There are 768 corporate licensees for H.264. Heavyweights, damn near all of them.

AVC/H.264 Licensees

Canonical is on board. Japan is on board. China is on board. 3M. HBO. Honeywell. Lockheed Martin. Nikon. Nintendo....

Does Apple hold any patents on H.264? So many people seem to hold patent on parts of H.264 that I am not sure who does and does not.

Yes. They also hold patents to MP4 as well.

It's not a selling point, it's a starting point. It's a sine qua non. For an application like video on the Web, nothing non-free can even enter the conversation.

This takes the geek out of the conversation.

Because he can't stop the entrepreneur from introducing new applications and services that will have mass-market appeal and success.

He can't stop tech from taking gaining a strangle hold outside the web.

For example:

The number of AVC/H.264 licensees is rapidly approaching 800.

Why not just buy h.264 outright? What's the market cap for the company that owns it? It's got to be a drop in the bucket compared to licencing fees down the road, plus what they paid (1 billion dollars) for YouTube

The following is an abridged list of licensors of patents included in the AVC patent pool:

Apple
Bosch
Columbia University
DAEWOO
Dolby Laboratories
France Télécom
Fraunhofer
Fujitsu
Hitachi
Philips
LG
Microsoft
Mitsubishi Electric
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone [NTT]
Panasonic
Samsung
Siemans
Toshiba

AVC/H.264 Licensors

Many hardware devices already have H.264 decoding built into the chip, ranging from set-top boxes to the iPhone.

There are 762 corporate licensees for AVC/H.264 Licensees is 762 - and the list just keeps on growing.

Canonical is here. Apple. Google. Microsoft.

The big names in OEM manufacturing. In networking [Cisco].

In brand-name consumer electronics. [LG and Samsung] In military hardware [Lockheed Martin]. In cable, broadcast and satellite television - most visibly those based in China and Japan.

No one company owns H.264. The patents are spread out across about two dozen companies listed on the licensors page. Some of them, like Apple and Microsoft, have market capitalizations close to that of Google.

Could Google just completely buy out whoever owns the H.264 patents?

Hell no. I don't think Google has the cash to buy a 51 percent stake in each of these companies. For one thing, Google (market cap 171 billion USD) would have to buy Apple (market cap 184 billion USD).

You say it's everywhere, and that's why it has already won. It's not nearly as widespread as you seem to think. Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

AVC/H.264 Licensees currently number 760.

Reading the list is, as I have said before, like watching a freight train built up speed and momentum. The geek is not going to be able to stop this thing.

Can we at least get the Linux Foundation to support Ogg/Theora as a supported format to upload videos in. Ideally they would accept only Ogg and use HTML5 to show the videos instead of Flash..

The Flash player delivers H.264 video to 99% of the potential market. Flash Player Version Penetration

Hardware accelerated in Flash 10.

The browser with Ogg/Theora support has about 22% of the market. Browser market share

What it does not have is YouTube. What it does not it have is the potent backing of 759 corporate licensees - the biggest names in broadcasting and consumer tech. AVC/H.264 Licensees

What happens to open source browsers like FF who can't pay for the patents and licenses?

755 corporations have licensed H.264. AVC/H.264 Licensees It's a damned impressive list. Scrolling through it is like watching a freight train build up speed and momentum.

While Firefox is beginning to look more and more like the heroine tied to the railroad tracks around the next bend.

91% of Mozilla's funding comes from Google. Could open source abandon the Google train? Now would be a really, really good time to put some of that money to good use. Cut a deal.

Because I don't think Rin-Tin-Tin is coming to the rescue.

Replying to myself, but holy crap.

FORTY SEVEN PAGES JUST TO LIST THE PATENTS.

Yeah, you're gonna need an army of lawyers for the "work around the H.264 patents" technique.

> Not if that competitor is somewhere in Asia, for example.

H.264 is covered by patents granted in Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India. I didn't look for others; there might be more.

> Or in almost any country in Europe.

Covered by patents granted in Germany, France, UK, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Slovenia.

> Canada may be an option as well

It's not. Plenty of patents on H.264 granted in Canada.

Oh, not on the above lists, but also places where H.264 is patent-encumbered: Australia, Mexico.

Oh, and I stopped on page 6 of the 45-page list of patents. There might be a few other countries hiding in there.

Source: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx

I think it would be pretty difficult to be a major Youtube competitor without having any operations in any of the countries above, in the near term. Heck, just finding some place not on the list that have the right bandwidth to places with the rich viewers who are worth targeting with ads (generally the US and Europe at the moment) might be hard enough.

The list of licensees is extensive for H.264. The only Web browsers currently out of the loop are Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror and WebKit browsers for Linux that aren't developed by Google. I'd imagine the list of licensees that includes Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, DirecTV, Samsung, Sorenson, LG, Toshiba, Sony, Mitsubishi, HBO, Fuji, Fujitsu, Sandisk, Sun Microsystems, Facebook, etc: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx It's rather obvious that Mozilla pushing Ogg/Theora should target Viacom, Time Warner and other content producers before they license H.264.

But it's extremely predictable that the MAFIAA won't mind at all that their files are distributed in a format where only huge corporations can afford to be "gatekeepers". It's a lot easier to get MS, Google, Apple, Adobe and the hardware OEMs around the table to make sure they conform to some draconian closed-source end-to-end DRM scheme once all the small independent open-source software clients are out of the picture.

The list of licensees is extensive for H.264. The only Web browsers currently out of the loop are Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror and WebKit browsers for Linux that aren't developed by Google. I'd imagine the list of licensees that includes Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, DirecTV, Samsung, Sorenson, LG, Toshiba, Sony, Mitsubishi, HBO, Fuji, Fujitsu, Sandisk, Sun Microsystems, Facebook, etc:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx

It's rather obvious that Mozilla pushing Ogg/Theora should target Viacom, Time Warner and other content producers before they license H.264.

[1]
[2](English translation)

Firefox would be paying $5million/yr. $5m would pay for a lot of codec development, and Firefox wouldn't be the only one paying: anyone else distributing a h264 supporting browser that isn't judgement proof would need to pay, and everyone serving up video. So practically, doing your hosting will no longer be realistic: We'll be stuck with service providers like youtube with their insane habit of taking your files down on a whim.

Mpegla states that they are already collecting $66 per every man, woman, and child on earth. How much more do you think they're going to make once we hand them over the Internet?

Goodbye open web. Hello pay to play.

Apple is listed as a licensee

There are many reasons why this is happening:

1. ACTA agreement and license fees are up for renewal.
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx
All OEM product makers and content encoders are now waiting on the 2010 agreement from the mpegla licensing aggregation company . It will be stiff fees apparently, although not confirmed yet. What is even stranger is that we are now in 2010, and they have still not released the new licensing terms. Very weird; What are they waiting on i wonder ? Maybe ACTA resolution ?
Most China OEMS don't pay the fees, and hence why ACTA is being "negotiated" so secretly also.
http://www.eetasia.com/login.do?fromWhere=/ART_8800463180_499501_NT_5bb04467.HTM
So this is a "double whammy" waiting to explode.

2. There are many other codecs around to choose from and why not test the water for others.
There is much discussion in this area. But its a chicken and Egg game.
You can make a fantastic codec, but you gotta have GPU support, otherwise its pointless.
See below for how this can happen in the Long Tail version.

3. Google knows that its Chrome OS is reaching a tipping point where they need to decide how they will handle video - they need to resolve this and get their ducks in a row.
They can do flash on ARM CPU now, but i am sure they wish they did not have to.
And they also know that with JavaScript and HTML% coming through like a train, Flash days are definitely numbered. See Sproutcore JavaScript framework for example of one of the many "flash replacements".
And they have OpenGL covered with O3D and WebGl also moving forward very fast now with working implementations and even content conversion thinks to the Collada Open 3d format specification not fully entrenched.

they can do NACL (NativeClient), and have already implemented a NACL c language h264 decoder. This was one of the first libraries they did !!
Native Client FAQ: http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/wiki/FAQ
H264 Implementation: http://geekglue.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-native-client.html

So the cards on the table are all congealing based on the above factors, and its a good time for Google to see where the cards fall for them and their various business models.
So, why not ask the users too.

I think it will come down to the h264 licensing terms to be released, and the ability for GPU's and embedded GPUs to handle video decoding.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf

its free for the first 100,000 oem units, and then pretty cheap.

BUT; it states these are for up to 2010, so we are now in 2010 and i cant find the costs on their site yet

ged

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if IE9 at a bare minimum supports <video> and <audio> It's such a simple thing to hack into the engine that even they should be able to pull it off without any fuss.

From talking with Gecko, WebKit, and Presto developers on the public-html and whatwg mailing lists about video/audio, my impression is that they definitely are not so simple. But Adrian Bateman of Microsoft has clearly stated on public-html that he thinks video and audio are a good idea, so it seems likely they'll go for it at some point (although I wouldn't bet on IE9).

As for codecs, I'd bet they do like Apple and just go with supporting whatever the system video codecs are (Safari uses QuickTime). They already have complete video-playing implementations, like Apple but unlike Mozilla or Opera or Google, so why would they rewrite or fork it for IE? Although, like Apple, they do hold patents on H.264, so maybe they'll also avoid Theora support.

Or it could be that Apple is an AVC patent holder, and stands to gain by pushing a format that they can later cash in on. Given this advantage, Apple is unlikely to support any free formats, and is likely using Theora's shortcomings as an excuse.

Funny how a lot of commenters here are quick to point out the possible ulterior motives of Microsoft, but so few do the same for Apple.

Q: Are all MPEG-2 essential patents included? A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. The purpose of the License is to offer a convenient licensing alternative to everyone on the same terms and to include as much essential intellectual property as possible for their convenience. Participation in the License is voluntary on the part of essential patent holders, however.

So each implementer is still on the hook if a new patent holder pops up.

The browsers need to start supporting free codecs now. Streaming h.264 is free for now, but that party is going to end at the end of 2010. If YouTube has to start paying royalties for every h.264 stream they serve up you better bet the whole game is going to change.

Theora/Dirac/Whatever start looking real good when consider that it keeps the web "free". Imagine if you had to pay everytime you served up a jpeg on your website? If you want to serve video from your site in a couple years, you may have to. I say we pick an open format now, to avoid all that headache now.

There is already a technically superior, non-patent encumbered, world wide standard with ubiquitous silicon support: ISO/MPEG

Where did you get the idea that MPEG is not patent encumbered? It's been patented since MPEG 1.

Not to mention the impending MPEG4 patent licensing bomb that's coming up next year. Remember all those sites streaming MPEG4 for free (I'm looking at you YouTube). It's going to be very expensive to stream MPEG4 after 2010.

Now is the time to start converting all that content to free format.

> Google, Opera and Mozilla won't support anything that puts them at risk of needing to pay
> royalties on the huge number of free downloads they give away.

That statement is hard to reconcile with the fact that Google is shipping H.264 support in chrome.

That discrepancy is easy to account for by noting that the MPEG-LA licensing terms for H.264 (see http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf ) have a cap on royalty payments. Looking at the rates there, anything over 10 million shipping units is effectively a flat fee of $5 million. For this year, at least. It's not clear to me whether the cap applies across both parts (a) and (b) of the licensing agreement; if it does, then Google might hit the cap just due to the "2 cents (per view?) per youtube video longer than 12 minutes" bit.

Note that Opera has explicitly said that the licensing fee is why they're not implementing H.264 support.

Also note that Mozilla has explicitly said that while it can pay the licensing fee it's not clear whether the result would fall within the letter of the open-source licenses it wishes to use, and would clearly fall outside the spirit (in that the browser could not be redistributed by someone else without paying the same licensing fees).

I can't speak to Apple and Microsoft, though I think their patent concerns are valid at least in their minds. But I think you're reading a lot more into the actions of Google, Opera, Mozilla than is there (and reading some things in that are _definitely_ not there in the case of Google).

Well, Theora may currently be worse than H.264/MPEG-4, but according to TFA by some measures it's already much better than the MPEG-2 that DVDs and your Satellite TV uses, so it's not exactly horrible.

As to whether you care about licencing, that depends on how you are planning to use it. The trouble with MPEG-4 is that not only do you need to pay for the encoder/decoder, but they also require you to pay them royalties if you're making money selling MPEG-4 encoded movies.

They have their "Participation Fees" listed here:

http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html

So basically MPEG-4 imposes a tax that:

1) Gets added to the cost of any consumer electronics you buy that uses it
2) You pay if you want to use your own videos commercially!

Remember that even if Theora didn't improve an iota from today, which it surely will (just as DivX, Xvid did) we're only talking about 60% more bits for the same quality to MPEG-4. With communication speeds and memory capacities increasing like crazy, you'd have to be a fool to fuss about a 60% hit today and prefer instead to pay a "participation" tax to the MPEG-4/H.262 consortium for the rest of your life.

That isn't reality? I think I must be misunderstanding this quote from the mpeg news release on their licensing.

"Title-by-Title - For AVC video (either on physical media or ordered and paid for on title-by-title basis, e.g., PPV, VOD, or digital download, where viewer determines titles to be viewed or number of viewable titles are otherwise limited), there are no royalties up to 12 minutes in length. For AVC video greater than 12 minutes in length, royalties are the lower of (a) 2% of the price paid to the licensee from licenseeâ(TM)s first arms length sale or (b) $0.02 per title. Categories of licensees include (i) replicators of physical media, and (ii) service/content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, video DSL, internet and mobile) of VOD, PPV and electronic downloads to end users. "

http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html (slashdot is refusing to put in proper line breaks for me)

Could somebody please explain to me why the license matters? I mean, I understand that if a license limits mpeg-4 encoding to a single government computer running Windows ME that was lost 5 years ago, that the license is a HUGE barrier to entry to use the codec. However, in this case the license seems to be the only single category in which Theora wins. The compression is worse than mpeg-4. The compression takes more space. But look! The license is a little better! WINNER!

You understand quite wrong. After having paid (a small amount) for the encoder, if you decide to post your > 12 minutes clip on the web, you're likely gonna have to pay through your nose come 2011. And everybody that wants to watch it must have paid for the decoder (another small amount).

The current H.264/MPEG-4 AV licensing is rather palatable, as they're trying to gain market share; decoders and encoders sold before 2005 were even spared any licensing fee. But this license expires at the end of 2010. So you see, it's like the drug dealers' business model: first treat is cheap/free. Once you're addicted to it, we're in business.

TFA explains it, and even has a convenient clicky for you:

After 2010, Mpeg-4 fees are increasing to include "internet broadcast fees" which apply when distributing Mpeg-4 content on the internet. This means that if I host my own Mpeg-4 clip on my own site, I owe an additional fee depending on how many times the clip is downloaded (for clips over 12 minutes) -- see mpeg licensing press release.

This document describes the terms of the H.264 license. The license seems to cover both encoding and decoding.

But the cost of the H.264 licenses are vanishingly small compared to the extra bandwidth cost of using Theora for a company like Google or Apple.

Using H.264 is free as long as clips are under 12 minutes. A number which may sound familiar to YouTube users :).

Here's info on the MPEG-LA licensing terms: http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avc-agreement.cfm

The patent license permits royalty-free redistribution of the Library

I doubt that.

For branded encoder and decoder products sold both to end users and on an OEM basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of an operating system, royalties per legal entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no royalty; US $0.20 per unit after first 100,000 units each year; above 5 million units per year, royalty = US $0.10 per unit.

Maybe they use h.264 because Apple are one of the patent holders of h264.

Where do you dig up this tripe.

Apple doesn't want to touch Theora, FLAC, Ogg or any other open codec/container because of the patent lawsuit magnet issue.

What a pile of Rubbish. They want you to use h.264 because they have patents for h.264 and some of those license fees goes to apple.

Europe, Russia, India, Australia, and China have been using DVB-T for their digital broadcast television. Support for DVB hardware in free operating systems like Linux

To implement DVB-T legally, you need to pay the DVB-T license pool.

If Theora can get within the ballpark in terms of quality, but beat H.264 in speed, that could be the edge it needs to hit the mainstream.

Except that a good number of the big industry players have their hands some how involved in the patent pool of H.264. If you think they are going to ditch H.264 for some no-name free codec then you are living in a dream world. http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avc-licensors.cfm

I have a feeling MKV is exactly what's needed right now.

And I have a feeling that you're wrong.

Splendid argument! You clearly are victorious on this one.

MPEG (all revisions) and VP1 are also open standards.

For a fee MPEG is very open for you to implement. Have a look here and here. Mind you H.264 is equally open, so the argument about free and open is moot anyway. We can debate the legality of patents and the GPL as much as we want, but the truth is that in some countries you're very likely to get sued if you ship a commercial product without paying the fee.

MKV is here to stay simply because it's perfect for 2009.

I don't know if Matroska is here to stay, but I'm sure seeing a lot of it lately. I personally prefer Matroska because it's worked well enough for me. If it's here to stay is something we'll see if in 5 years. I'm pretty sure that its use will predominantly be by pirates/thieves/ninjas/media-liberators/whatever-term-you-fancy, and that a small minority will actually use it for something legal. The major media outlets will most likely ignore it completely, because they've already invested tons of money in MPEG and both standards still do the same damn thing. The average consumer won't care as long as the moving pictures keep coming to his giant widescreen tv.

The thing I'm most hyped about anyway is H.264, or rather my experiences with x264. I've been using it to do some tests for encoding data from an HD camera and I'm quite pleased with the results.

There are no licensing fees for MP4 or any of the ISO standardized codecs.

I hate to do this, but...BZZZT! Wrong!!. Straight from the horse's mouth, the MPEG LA:

"To align with the real-world flow of MPEG-4 commerce, reasonable royalties are apportioned throughout the MPEG-4 Visual value chain."

So yes, you do have to pay license fees on the patents used in MP4.

Mart

No. I'm sure they're making a pretty penny here. The highest single codec license fee I know if is MPEG-2, which was $2.50 last I checked. VC-1 and H.264 are less than a dollar each.

Lots more about codec licensing than you'd ever care to learn can be found at http://www.mpegla.com/.

Mpeg-2 is afaik $2.50 each for encode and decode per unit.

Add $0.25 per unit above 50'000 for Mpeg-4 SP/ASP.

For H.264 (a.k.a Mpeg-4 AVC) it is as far as I can figure:

0-100'000 units: free
100'000 - 5 mill: $0.20 per unit
5 mill+ : $0.10 per unit

You want fries (erm, VC-1) with that? Similar licensing cost as with AVC.

All said and done it doesn't look like it should add more than a few $ at retail. Probably the same price as now, actually, because somewhere in the value chain someone is already paying the license fee if the card comes with accelerated windows drivers.

I assume the sticking point is that if VIA was to release open source accelerated drivers, mpeg-la might come asking for money for every single chip VIA makes.

Mpeg-2 is afaik $2.50 each for encode and decode per unit.

Add $0.25 per unit above 50'000 for Mpeg-4 SP/ASP.

For H.264 (a.k.a Mpeg-4 AVC) it is as far as I can figure:

0-100'000 units: free
100'000 - 5 mill: $0.20 per unit
5 mill+ : $0.10 per unit

You want fries (erm, VC-1) with that? Similar licensing cost as with AVC.

All said and done it doesn't look like it should add more than a few $ at retail. Probably the same price as now, actually, because somewhere in the value chain someone is already paying the license fee if the card comes with accelerated windows drivers.

I assume the sticking point is that if VIA was to release open source accelerated drivers, mpeg-la might come asking for money for every single chip VIA makes.

Mpeg-2 is afaik $2.50 each for encode and decode per unit.

Add $0.25 per unit above 50'000 for Mpeg-4 SP/ASP.

For H.264 (a.k.a Mpeg-4 AVC) it is as far as I can figure:

0-100'000 units: free
100'000 - 5 mill: $0.20 per unit
5 mill+ : $0.10 per unit

You want fries (erm, VC-1) with that? Similar licensing cost as with AVC.

All said and done it doesn't look like it should add more than a few $ at retail. Probably the same price as now, actually, because somewhere in the value chain someone is already paying the license fee if the card comes with accelerated windows drivers.

I assume the sticking point is that if VIA was to release open source accelerated drivers, mpeg-la might come asking for money for every single chip VIA makes.

$DEITY on a stick!

What compiler was used? (that would be GNU C, C++)
What linker... I'll wait... (that would be GNU ld)
In general, GNU bintools.
What editor? was it emacs? (it could have been vi, or vim). But, if you use emacs...
What shell? Bash. GNU again.

As to the "ogg" -- mpeg-2 patents: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-agreement.cfm
mpeg-1 uses mp3 audio, which is patented. Heck, even fedora doesn't play it!
AVI? Its a fucking minefield (I REALLY don't have the time to post the patents involved -- fortunately a lot of the companies involved are dead, or don't care -- allowing us to play these formats with x86 shims).

GNU means ONLY open, which means... ogg. Get over it. The FSF would make no other choice.

Just a tip: You should at least make up some facts to support assertions like that... otherwise their absence is conspicuous.

In this case, the conspicuousness is well justified: The facts don't support you. I can't only assume you're talking about green-marker sniffing morons when you say audiophile, because every objective double-blind listening test on the internet over 64kbit/sec shows Vorbis either clearly beating or tying with the competition.

AAC most certainly is "propritary" by the usual language used on this forum. It is extensively patented. Software and hardware makers have to pay licensing and media distributors are subject to per-use fees. It is impossible to legally use AAC in many countries without fees being paid to the licensing pool.

It's true that Apple didn't play an important role in the creation of AAC (although Nokia did), but like Nokia Apple is a participant in the MPEG LA licensing pool and as such they receive fees for MPEG systems licensing and can avoid paying fees themselves by cross-licensing with other pool members rather than paying into the pool.

It's technically possible to wrap Vorbis up in DRM, and people have done so... The popular DRM system are just wrappers and could neutrally be applied to any codec.

It's not a secret at all. The problem is this. Distributing a software or hardware implementation requires paying a royalty for using the patents. It's (part of) the reason for off-shore sites like Debian-multimedia.

What I don't know is why the patents would prevent them from releasing their driver code. If the decoder is implemented in hardware there shouldn't be much code for it in the driver. Honestly, I would expect most of the licensed IP would be on the hardware side of things. But then again I don't make graphics cards, so I really don't know.

H.264 is certainly not exempt from MPEG-LA "crap" : http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html

As far as XVID is concerned, if anything the situation is even more crappy.

"Due primarily to concerns over patents, the official Xvid homepage does not provide binary versions of the Xvid codec."
"Since Xvid uses MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) compression, video encoded with it is MPEG-4 ASP video (not "Xvid video")"

(Source: wikipedia)

So basically, XVID is as much covered in MPEG-LA "crap" as are MPEG4 and H.264....

H.264 or even XVID would be multiple times as efficient,

and the latter is free so you don't have to deal with this crap..

QuickTime is fully documented, and anyone is free to implement it. That's pretty open to me. Aside from that, the obvious connotation of "proprietary" among the geek crowd is something that is completely closed and secret. QuickTime is not what proprietary colloquially implies. Apple does not keep the format secret to leverage against competitors.

Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others[1] from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

QuickTime is fully documented, and anyone is free to implement it. That's pretty open to me. Aside from that, the obvious connotation of "proprietary" among the geek crowd is something that is completely closed and secret. QuickTime is not what proprietary colloquially implies. Apple does not keep the format secret to leverage against competitors.

Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others[1] from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

QuickTime is fully documented, and anyone is free to implement it. That's pretty open to me. Aside from that, the obvious connotation of "proprietary" among the geek crowd is something that is completely closed and secret. QuickTime is not what proprietary colloquially implies. Apple does not keep the format secret to leverage against competitors.

Rather, a patent provides the right to exclude others[1] from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention for the term of the patent, which is usually 20 years from the filing date. A patent is, in effect, a limited property right that the government offers to inventors in exchange for their agreement to share the details of their inventions with the public. Like any other property right, it may be sold, licensed, mortgaged, assigned or transferred, given away, or simply abandoned.

This is not FUD, I'm sorry to say.

Mythtv does not pay royalties to the MPEG LA (licensing authority). This body handles licensing hundreds of the patents that cover MPEG technology, up to and including MPEG-4.

Go to this page and peruse the licensee list: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-licensees.cfm

Find mythtv on the list or acknowledge myth violates the hundreds of patents listed here: http://www.mpegla.com/m2/m2-patentlist.cfm