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H.264 and VP8 Compared
TheReal_sabret00the writes with a snippet from StreamingMedia.com: "VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself."
The comparison seems to use sorenson squeeze (based on MainConcept if I am not mistaken).
I don't believe it can mach x264's capabilities and speed.
Using x264 for comparison would be much fairer.
The comparison is done by Jan Ozer. He's billed as a "video codec expert" but I don't think he has the technical expertise to, for example, make use of x264. His previous H.264 versus Theora comparison wasn't very impressive either. The x264 developers described Ozer's Theora versus H.264 comparison as "one of the worst articles they had ever seen".
No, patents are broken. They're intended to work for limited times, but a number of strategies for extending them have arisen that make them indefinitely persistent. They're broken. Even in the best case they prevent progress. Look at the early example of the steam engine. The late movement to change them from first invention to first to patent promises to bring innovation to a grinding halt.
Even Tesla's invention of radio was for a long time blocked by Marconi's patents and only recognized after his death. Patents not only are broken, they have always been. Patents prevent progress, and the prevention of progress is the opposite of the purpose and justification for patents.
Patents are patently bad. The US Constitution grants to Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights - but it does not require Congress to do so. We can fix this.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The company had been around since the early 1990's. They were well aware of video patents, and monitored patent filings quite closely. Many of their features were adopted on the day that the statutory 1 year gap between publication of a method and possible patent filing expired. Much of the VP8 codec is actually prior art for the patents in the H.264 pool. On2 codecs have been used in Theora, Flash and Microsoft video products. If MPEG LA goes after them, it seems likely MPEG LA will lose more than they win - especially since all of us will be against them. Additionally, they'll be in court facing off with their patents against Google, and I hear Google has a few folks who know how to look stuff up like prior art. Heck, Google probably did this looking up before they decided to spend a hundred million dollars on buying the company just to give away its technology. It seems likely Google did look some stuff up before they decided to transcode their entire YouTube library to VP8. They're diligent like that.
And so having done the math, MPEG LA is investigating creating a patent pool to support VP8. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It seems unlikely they'll find success in this, but they will try.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, the MPEG-LA is forming a patent pool because they want to scare people away from VP8 or at least into paying protection money to the MPEG-LA "just in case".
Try asking the MPEG-LA what specific patents they think you need to license to use VP8. They won't tell you. This is somewhere between FUD and extortion.
And BTW "the x264 developers" are one guy who doesn't know much about patents because his project ignores them. Ask yourself whether he knows more than the people at Google who approved spending $120M on On2, which will be almost entirely wasted if it turns out VP8 requires MPEG-LA licensing.