41–50 of 63 posts
https://goughlui.com/2020/05/17/c-band-adventures-looking-fo...
https://goughlui.com/2020/05/21/satellite-more-avs-avs2-head...
[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
>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. True enough. But at least in the USA all the satellite companies, and their set top…
What does a frequency have to do with a video format? And how do you define stolen?
I am not sure where to begin. But let's start with EVC. EVC Baseline is expected to be 20% better than AVC High Profile , 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. Now on to VVC. I am surprised by the sentence MC-IF has 31 membe…
Those three have one funny thing in common, they dont produce any content.
Meanwhile China said fuck this shit and developed[1] own standards, AVS/AVS+/AVS2, and is already running 4K broadcast tests. https://goughlui.com/2020/05/17/c-band-adventures-looking-fo... https://goughlui.com/2020/05/21/satellite-more-avs-avs2-head... [1] Seemingly no source code available for AVS2 decoders, dubious claims of beating HEVC without independent tests, and China history of "independent" development by…
If a physicist can't patent superconductivity (you can't patent discoveries and laws of nature), should it be possible to patent compression algorithms? The case for patents in software, as additional protection on top on copyright, is not clear to me.
Frankly neither copyright nor the patent law is actually suitable for software. Software deserves a tailor-made IP law that actually recognises the difference between compiled code and source code, the rights of the consumer to modify his device and keep it updated, etc. There should be an escrow-type system, where protection is granted if code is hosted in a public repository, and is made public after 20 years or so.
All executable should be treated in a standard way, and there should be no EULA outside of enterprise systems. A consumer person does not need to read EULA when they buy a book or a car, why should they do so when they buy a PC?
Until this happens, I feel developing nations shouldn't even recognise software patents - copyright is protection enough.
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).
Can somebody explain what it means to hold the IP or rights of any of these standards?
In particular IP here ends up meaning patents. Patents are a particularly egregious right because though they were created with a specific trade in mind they were almost immediately perverted so as to keep only one side of the trade. So the idea of patents is, if Alice invents something really fucking amazing she explains the invention, pays the government some money and they publicise her explanation but she is enti…
Hey, you just described S3TC patent! Funnily enough S3 ripped off Apple, copying verbatim Hoffert work at Apple Advanced Technology Group and consequent patents from 1990 (US5046119A) for Apple Video 'road pizza' codec, except their patent added "for texture compression" at the end. The patent is about dividing colorspace between two points by dividing colors by 3 :-) and is directly coped from Apple. Gotta love how wikipedia calls direct copy a "This mode operates similarly to mode 0xC0 of the original Apple Video codec".
Amazingly S3 even had the balls to try and sue Apple for S3TC royalties in 2010. Sadly Apple loves patents and didnt bother trying to invalidate, they were content winning on technicality. S3TC patents are expired now.
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. Disclaimer: I was founder of on2 Technologies, acquired by Google and the basis for av1. There really Is quite a bit to this story, starting in the early 90s and leading up to the situation today.
The history sounds very interesting. Can you share any links to helpful coverage?
I think what might really be interesting was the decision process to open-source vp3, AKA Theora, the ancestor of vp8, vp9, and AV1. Even though it was only marginally competitive with mpeg-4, the existence of a free alternative, seemingly unencumbered by the sort of patent problems afflicting MPEG, put a check on MPEG becoming a virtual monopoly.
In 2010, Google took the baton with the acquisition of on2, and doubled down on the open-source approach.
TL;DR: 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. Efforts to co-ordinate those large companies in those exploits are probably now doomed, as are the organisations behind them. The future almost certainly belon…
The billion dollar plus a year residual stream can pay for a lot of efforts to keep trying to refresh the stream.
The author of the post seems to hold the position that mpeg falling apart is because many companies have been too aggressive. But the lesson that some are going to walk away with it that they haven't been aggressive enough.
Meanwhile China said fuck this shit and developed[1] own standards, AVS/AVS+/AVS2, and is already running 4K broadcast tests. https://goughlui.com/2020/05/17/c-band-adventures-looking-fo... https://goughlui.com/2020/05/21/satellite-more-avs-avs2-head... [1] Seemingly no source code available for AVS2 decoders, dubious claims of beating HEVC without independent tests, and China history of "independent" development by…
I would say that in this case, that's a reasonable decision. If a physicist can't patent superconductivity (you can't patent discoveries and laws of nature), should it be possible to patent compression algorithms? The case for patents in software, as additional protection on top on copyright, is not clear to me. Frankly neither copyright nor the patent law is actually suitable for software. Software deserves a tailor…
I would say yes, at least for lossy compression, where the challenge is not about shuffling bits but finding semi-artistic graphical approximations of common video patterns.
I also approve of an industry-wide effort to patent-unencumbered solutions.
TL;DR: 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. Efforts to co-ordinate those large companies in those exploits are probably now doomed, as are the organisations behind them. The future almost certainly belon…
It's a bit too quick to call propritary video codecs dead. The billion dollar plus a year residual stream can pay for a lot of efforts to keep trying to refresh the stream. The author of the post seems to hold the position that mpeg falling apart is because many companies have been too aggressive. But the lesson that some are going to walk away with it that they haven't been aggressive enough.
I think it's clear which way the water is flowing, though, and I don't think any amount of distress on the part of the fading powers of yesteryear is going to change that. There is too much incentive and too much technical expertise on the other side, and that side also has enough big players with their own legal teams to block attempts at obstruction by questionable legal challenge.