Put another way: The video patent cartels have fragmented due to greed, and so the cartel enablers at ISO have lost their purpose. In addition, organizations are tired of paying bridge tolls.<p>So we can finally have open standards for video that anyone can just use and implement. AV1 in particular seems to be on its way to replacing them: <a href="https://research.mozilla.org/av1-media-codecs/" rel="nofollow">https://research.mozilla.org/av1-media-codecs/</a>
This is really a story of Open Source and shared intellectual property finally winning out over expensive, proprietary standards that tried to present themselves as something else.<p>Disclaimer: I was founder of on2 Technologies, acquired by Google and the basis for av1.<p>There really Is quite a bit to this story, starting in the early 90s and leading up to the situation today.
I don't really understand what the point of EVC is. From my understanding it's really <i>two</i> standards, one royalty-free that's slightly <i>worse</i> than HEVC/H.265, and one patent-encumbered/licensed that's slightly <i>better</i> than H.265.<p>The post here says "EVC is promising because it provides a quality that is comparable with or better than AV1, although less than VVC. EVC may have a chance if a licence will be published. However, this has not happened yet." I can only assume, from those numbers above, that "comparable with or better than AV1" applies only to the encumbered/enhanced variant.<p>It's hard to see why anyone would bother to implement the "base" standard vs. the already widely-deployed AVC/H.264, nor the "enhanced" one which seems to be roughly comparable to AV1 but with licensing costs attached (and as the post points out, no certainty at all about what that licensing would actually entail). Apart from those companies that hold the relevant patents, of course.
Meanwhile China said fuck this shit and developed[1] own standards, AVS/AVS+/AVS2, and is already running 4K broadcast tests.<p><a href="https://goughlui.com/2020/05/17/c-band-adventures-looking-for-avs-4k-uhd-services-lte-5g-interference/" rel="nofollow">https://goughlui.com/2020/05/17/c-band-adventures-looking-fo...</a><p><a href="https://goughlui.com/2020/05/21/satellite-more-avs-avs2-headaches-test-4k-uhd-transmissions/" rel="nofollow">https://goughlui.com/2020/05/21/satellite-more-avs-avs2-head...</a><p>[1] Seemingly no source code available for AVS2 decoders, dubious claims of beating HEVC without independent tests, and China history of "independent" development by copy&paste notwithstanding
Am I reading it right ? The text says:
> But there is a big news: MPEG passed away on 2020/06/02T16:30 CEST.
Does that really mean MPEG is no more ? Or is it hyperbole about something that happened 2nd of june ?
This would be huge (and really sad).
I am not sure where to begin. But let's start with EVC.<p>EVC Baseline is expected to be 20% better than AVC <i>High Profile</i>, and EVC Main Profile is expected to be 30% better than HEVC. The Codec is backed by Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm. If you are unfamiliar with the Smartphone market, The three would represent roughly 80% of marketshare excluding Apple.<p>Now on to VVC. I am surprised by the sentence<p><i>MC-IF has 31 members, 7 of which are licensing entities (i.e. a little less than ¼ of all members). The “industry” members account for just ½ of the HEVC patent holders. It is hardly believable that VVC will fare better than HEVC. It could very well fare worse because VVC adoption in broadcasting will take years.</i><p>Well Yes. That is because 7 of those licensing entities already covered most if not all of the industry. ( Excluding a few Open Media Alliance Member of course ) The MC-IF actually includes <i>ALL</i> of the current HEVC patents holders. That is HEVC Advance and Velos Media, which is basically Samsung and Qualcomm, along with many others that were not in any HEVC patent pool due to disagreement in the first place.<p>( And If you notice the removal of the infamous Technicolor, they sold their patents to another entity that is inside MC-IF, but I cant remember which one on top of my head )<p>VVC is expected to be 50% more efficient than HEVC. And judging from its reference encoder, this is the first time since AVC / H.264 era a video codec that might actually live up to its claims. ( Normally marketing likes to use unrealistic claims ) It really is the state of the art Video Codec, at a decoding complexity that is quite manageable. ( Lower than AV1 )<p>So what does all that means? Samsung, Huawei and Qualcomm are also inside MC-IF ( represented by different groups ). My guess is that EVC is basically a backup plan or a gesture to MC-IF, if the licensing deal can be agreed upon, they will go with EVC.<p>As a video codec enthusiast, I am extremely excited with both VVC and EVC.<p>As to MPEG ( Not to be confused with MPEG-LA ), I am not quite sure why he said it is dead. I reread the article a few times and still dont quite understand it. May be I am missing some context?
This is absolutely amazing, I had no idea this would come so soon. I wonder how much the vp% series of codecs played a part, or netflix/amazon/youtube controlling both ends of the channel?<p>The next device to get converted to the web is the smart tv, there is no reason it literally has be anything different then a webpage, same goes for Roku.
>It should be no surprise that the HEVC standard has some use in broadcasting, but its use on the web is estimated to be at 12%. If one considers that broadcasting is a rich but declining market and video on the web is constantly rising, one understands that ISO standards will be gradually relegated to a more and more marginal market.<p>True enough. But at least in the USA all the satellite companies, and their set top boxes, are being forced to switch to HEVC because their half of their physical frequency spectrum was stolen by telcos. So there'll be substantial amounts of people making hardware for quite a while. The web isn't everything yet.
TL;DR:<p>A predatory business model based primarily on large companies exploiting legal technicalities to seek rent from innovators has been rendered obsolete because the large companies couldn't get their act together and the innovators did a better job anyway.<p>Efforts to co-ordinate those large companies in those exploits are probably now doomed, as are the organisations behind them.<p>The future almost certainly belongs to open standards and the community, though someone who has built their career around the old business model isn't happy about it.
i'll just leave that here: <a href="https://blog.playtherightfuture.com/aoms-av1-patents-arent-free-youre-just-not-paying-directly-for-them/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.playtherightfuture.com/aoms-av1-patents-arent-f...</a>