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MPEG LA Extends H.264 Royalty-Free Period

Posted by timothy on from the now-how-much-would-you-pay? dept.

Sir Homer writes "The MPEG LA has extended their royalty-free license (PDF) for 'Internet Video that is free to end users' until the end of 2016. This means webmasters who are registered MPEG LA licensees will not have to pay a royalty to stream H.264 video for the next six years. However the last patent in the H.264 portfolio expires in 2028, and the MPEG LA has not released what fees, if any, it will charge webmasters after this 'free trial' period is over."

2 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. A lot of fallout by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been personally touched by MPEG LA's patent witch hunt. And not in the good way like Kathleen Fent does.

    My brother in law is the CEO of a small LCD monitor company that uses H.264 decoder chips. He buys these chips from a Taiwanese maker who in turn licenses the patent for H.264 decoding from MPEG LA.

    But MPEG LA has been spamming everyone and anyone vaguely connected to H.264 encoding or playback or even (in this case) sending files across the intarweb. He is expected to succeed if MPEG LA ever takes this to court since the patent is already licensed by the chip vendor and his agreement with them covers him under its indemnity clause.

    However this is a really plain-as-day example of how patent trolls are ruining business for everyone.

  2. Re:And even if sucked by Kohlrabi82 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At the lower bit rate end of the spectrum Theora is not bad

    This is completely wrong, Theora is *escpecially* bad at low bitrates, I recently made a small comparison of Theora/Thusnelda and H264/x264 encoded 1080p videos, both looked very watchable at 4Mbit, but at 2Mbit problems for Theora/Thusnelda started, and at 1Mbit it was just plain awful. 2Mbit Theora/Thusnelda couldn't nearly reach H264/x264 quality at 1Mbit.