JL

[Originally a comment on hacker news on 29th May]

H.264 / MPEG4 part 10 / AVC

Yes it is patented which is a definite disadvantage compared with a theoretical[4] patent free codec but it has some real advantages.

1) The standard is controlled and defined by a collective industry group under the auspices of ISO. [1]

2) Most of the major players in video technology at the time took part in the standardisation so are committed to FRAND patent licensing terms. [2]

3) In almost all cases and commercial business models (that do not involve Free software) the MPEG-LA H.264 patent license is really very reasonable and unlikely to cause problems to an otherwise healthy business. Note that the license Google has to the MPEG-LA pool of patents while free is NOT compatible with Free software.

4) Any companies not in the MPEG-LA pool that popped up now with demands really would trolls in the original sense that they have sat under the bridge for a long time waiting for a juicy opportunity rather than being upfront earlier. I don't think that this would help them in a legal case although there is no guarantee that they don't exist. [3]

5) H.264 is really quite good although the latest codecs are showing what can be done with further development and processing power.

6) H.264 decoding (and often encoding) is cooked into a massive amount of existing and deployed devices in ways that cannot be adapted to VP8/VP9 by a software update.

For now H.264 is the no brainer option for any commercial system although multi codec support may be worthwhile in some cases. If you want patent free I recommend MPEG1 as I believe any patents on it should now be expired or at least expiring very soon if they were granted a long time after filing. I'm glad that Firefox has backed down and will now use the OS codecs to allow playback of H.264.

[1] The OOXML case shows that this isn't foolproof but in my view it is a better option than the standard being controlled by a single company even if the controlling company publishes the source code. This applied to Microsoft when they offered VC-1 as a free alternative to H.264 (there is now an MPEG-LA pool) and to Google now with VP8 and VP9 now. Google is the new Microsoft and has fully learnt the lessons of "Embrace, extend and extinguish".

[2] Not Free software compatible but better than nothing. And even Google's license to the VP8 patents from the MPEG-LA pool does not seem to grant Free software compatible rights.

[3] There is a greater risk of people popping up with claims against VP8 or VP9 as they are newer and less prominent. The MPEG-LA's call for a pool of patents has helped draw out those patent owners and many have joined the pool and reached terms with Google (although Nokia and maybe others haven't.

[4] Realistically for patent free greater than 20 years old is the answer so it probably needs to be MPEG1.

In response to the comment "Who cares about semantics." on Hacker News I wrote:

Language affects perception. Perception affects reality. Especially in human constructs like law and culture.

[Written as comment on Hacker News in response to this article.]

I think it is slightly unfortunate that the topic of the photo triggering this debate is a controversial political topic with many contradictory truths, claims and counterclaims of distortion and deceit. In this case there seems to be legitimate journalistic photography of the event that should be the focus of any debate about the event itself.

The real issue with this photograph are whether the digital processing applied exceeded that which is appropriate for a photography competition. Specifically there seems to be a suggestion that it may be composite of different photos from the same event although that seemed far from proven to me.

What do people feel are acceptable digital edits to be applied?

1) Global filters/brightness/contrast/sharpening

2) Similar filters applied to local areas to to ensure all wanted areas are properly lit and visible

3) Actually touching up/smudging or otherwise directly manipulating particular pixels.

4) Actually combining different photos (e.g. you have ten photos but someone (different) has their eyes shut in each one so you grab one face and merge it back onto the correct body).

Personally I don't see a single clear line where you should stop so I think that it should probably be spelled out in the competition rules.

[Text below extracted largely from my comments on this Hacker News discussion about this BBC news item although there is slightly more there it needs the context of the thread which I can't pull into this blog post easily (or legally given copyright laws).]

There is some truth in this article but it misses some of the really key factors.

1. Value of the Yen. The Yen is seen as a safe haven and has been at almost ridiculous levels (considering trade balances and government debt) at least since late 2008. This is crippling exports (and/or profitability) in these price sensitive markets (TV's, computers, phones) as even though much production is abroad they still have massive cost bases in Japan.
2. Development of Korea. LG and especially Samsung took the place of the aggressive upstarts driving down prices and then building up the quality as Japan once did to the West in markets such as cars. It will be interesting to see what China's development does to Korea in 15-20 years. So far the aggressive pricing from Korea has kept Chinese TV brands from prominence but that may not last.
3. As Japan prospered and incomes rose it became uneconomic to manufacture commodity items there. Outsourcing and offshoring production damages the feedback and development loop between production and design that enables efficient optimum design of products. Also they narrowed the parts of the supply chain that they supplied to focus on the high value ones that could still be profitable but that costs control and foresight into important developing areas. e.g. Samsung could develop LCD panels in exact form factors to fit their devices and to use them as structural elements in TVs getting a jump start on Sony. (Sharp had[has?] their own panels but the quality wasn't uniformly high and they were overly dependent on their home TV market anyway).
4. There is very little profit in many electronics items. TVs especially are not a source of profits (maybe Samsung makes some but it is hard to tell from their annual reports). Aggressive and falling prices, unstable panel supplies and the fact egos and ecosystems are on the line means that the once stable profit source of CRT TVs has been replaced by an LCD bloodbath. Even in mobile phones only Apple and Samsung are really making money (along with a number of component suppliers getting their slices).

Firstly I didn't say it would be impossible just potentially harder than if not a competitor.

I don't know the history of Steam that well but my understanding was that it started as an easy way to get their own games. Yes Sony Music could have done the same (maybe they did but I can't remember) but a store with a seemingly random selection of about 25% of pop music doesn't make a great hit in the era of Napster and when they are still pushing DRM (which Steam also uses).

I don't believe that as a company with about 25% of the music market could legally impose pricing conditions on it's competitors (Valve may allow flexible pricing but iTunes did not at least at the beginning and I don't believe was such a proportion of the market at the time).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5482547

Although I no longer work for the BBC and have already received my bonuses for the filing and granting (after I left the BBC) of this patent I have a personal curiosity as the core inventive step was (I believe) mine although it was greatly extended and improved by others with greater domain knowledge in MPEG encoding. As far as I know it was a novel idea and wasn't obvious in advance to experienced video encoding engineers.

The original idea was to treat encoding losses as errors/defects that can be fixed or patched by additional data distributed separately. This was extended to arbitrary enhancements and changes and potential implementations, consequences and techniques.

I believe that there was a real non-obvious inventive step in considering encoder losses as patchable bugs. Given that idea alone a (suboptimal) implementation is relatively easy to create but was not obvious if the task being discussed is using the early 2000's Internet to deliver better video quality than broadcast (SD) TV could.

I am not aware of any current usage of the ideas in this patent or what licenses the BBC may or may not have granted.

[Comments and responses here.]