[mythtv-users] H265 support

[Gary Buhrmaster]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2015 at 3:47 PM, Doug Lytle <support at drdos.info> wrote:
...
> At least one of the developers has made his feeling know about h265:
>
> http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2014-November/374342.html

Whether one agrees with software (algorithm) patents or not,
the fact is that they exist, and are enforceable, in a number
of jurisdictions.  H.265 is filled with a number of patents that
appear, at first read, to be either obvious, or overly broad.
However, now that the patents have been granted, and
codified as part of the standard, the FRAND licensing and
pricing comes into play.  And FOSS does not play well
with FRAND.

To provide a (theoretical, and absolutely not accurate)
example, say a popular web browser decided to embed
a software based H.265 player.  By the terms of the GPL,
they would be responsible for paying for the patent licensing
for everyone who used it.  Let us say that browser currently
has about a 15% share.  With ~3 billion Internet users
(some may share devices, but lets go with it), that means
the company owes the patent owners about $180 million
dollars (no, none of those numbers are correct, but you get
the order of magnitude of the issue).  And while a company
with deep pockets may be able to absorb such payments and
include a player in their software, not so much for all other
organizations.  A common "work around" is to launch an
external player.  Let someone else pay the royalty (also
works with using hardware based decoding, where someone
else has paid for the hardware license).  But now your
software may not work equally well (or at all) on all platforms.
Note that that video codec license does not include the
audio codec license fees (that may be the same, or more)
(you want audio with that video?)

It should be noted that Cisco, in order to address the
discussion over choice of codec for WebRTC, is paying
for a license for H.264 (as long as you use their binary).
That was extreme goodness for WebRTC deployment in
FOSS projects.  But that does not address all current
H.264 uses (it is only the constrained profile, as I recall).

Mozilla (and others) continue to push for a true unencumbered
set of codecs (daala), but history shows that avoiding all patents
(given the large number of patents out there that are overly
broad) is not an easy task, and gaining industry adoption is
likely even harder (and if no one supports you, you have failed).

So, for those that believe that codecs should be free,
H.265 and H.264, and .... are simply evil, and worse,
promote future evil by being adopted.