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Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

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Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#1

Post by formerly_proven »

It seems that right now there is no browser that supports h.265/HEVC even on hardware that can decode it - "Old Edge" used to, but "New Edge" does not. Neither Chrome nor Firefox support it (actually, both of those refuse to use any form of hardware decoding at all on my Windows box, only Edge uses it for VPx and h.264 - and of course every media player).

The only exception is Apple with Safari.

Why is this? h.265 can do a lot better than h.264 in some scenarios, but certainly isn't worse.

And why, oh why, is debugging hardware video acceleration still such a nightmare, even on Windows? Firefox doesn't even seem to have it in about:support any more!

And why is hardware video acceleration only a problem with browsers? I've never had any kind of problem with it with any media player, regardless of OS. It just works. But browsers - it seems to never work OOTB. Except for Edge, apparently. Which I thought was just a Chromium reskin with MS tracking.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#3

Post by theandrewbailey »

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over.

If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...

[1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#4

Post by formerly_proven »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over. If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P... [1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

But if an application merely uses the graphic's drivers API to decode a stream, presumably the GPU vendor (and therefore the buyer) already paid for those licensing costs? Otherwise the hardware wouldn't support h265, right?

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#5

Post by PaulHoule »

Vladimof wrote: post #2

probably a patent issue... I love x265 for the video file size and a decent video quality

Back in the DVD era there was a conscious attempt to converge between the PC industry and consumer electronics.

Since then (when they decided that Blu-Ray drives weren't going to be standard in PC) there has been a decoupling. HEVC is a consumer electronics standard, the PC industry is going towards VP9, AV1 and other royalty free codecs.

Up until HEVC most codecs had one patent pool you could pay a royalty to and be good. HEVC had the problems that two entities claim to control essential patents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Advance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#6

Post by mimsee »

formerly_proven wrote: post #4
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over. If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P... [1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

But if an application merely uses the graphic's drivers API to decode a stream, presumably the GPU vendor (and therefore the buyer) already paid for those licensing costs? Otherwise the hardware wouldn't support h265, right?

Perhaps there are software patents involved in the codecs and a license for those is different from the hardware ones

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#7

Post by throwaway67743 »

The other problem is like competing codecs (vpx comes to mind), they all require much more resources for little gain, both for encoding and decoding - even in hardware vp9 requires more than h264 (and 5), patents are not the only reason.

Also with a million competing codecs which do you choose....

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#8

Post by galad87 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #4
theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over. If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P... [1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

But if an application merely uses the graphic's drivers API to decode a stream, presumably the GPU vendor (and therefore the buyer) already paid for those licensing costs? Otherwise the hardware wouldn't support h265, right?

Right, but neither Google neither Mozilla wants to support it even if they don't need to pay a cent.

Re: Ask HN: Why does nobody support h.265/HEVC anymore?

#9

Post by msbarnett »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

H.265 requires getting a license from at least 2 patent pools[0], and who knows how many other patents are out there waiting to get sued over. If you want a new cross platform video codec, check out AV1.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P... [1] https://aomedia.org/av1/

The licenses have already been paid for the hardware implementation, that doesn't explain, eg, Chrome's refusal to leverage hardware decoding (and stop burning so much power on laptops).
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