Discussion
Firm quietly boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100,000 up to staggering $4.5 million — backbone codec of the internet gets meteoric increase, AVC hikes follow disastrous H.265 licensing increases
mrweasel: [delayed]
NooneAtAll3: what are the open source alternatives?
charcircuit: This is for patent licensing. Using an open source implementation doesn't get rid of your obligation to license the patents for it.
adrian_b: In most countries the H.264 patents have already expired, but in USA not yet.So that firm might try to squeeze every penny they can before the expiration of the patents.
falkensmaize: I guess to me this doesn't seem like that big of a deal? I mean if you have a 100 million subscribers, do you really care much about a few $million increase? I thought the big players like Youtube had already moved to open source codecs already anyway.
topranks: VP9, AV1
chromacity: As the article says, there are companies seeking royalties for both of these codecs.
kmeisthax: This seems particularly desperate, but I'm not surprised this is happening, given that patent owners in general have been very angry that H.264 didn't wind up being nearly as lucrative as MPEG-2 was. Hell, I remember the days when they couldn't even agree if H.264 should have a free streaming tier at all or not - and it seems like that went away.Maybe Google should finally make good on their threat to only stream YouTube in royalty-free standards.
adrian_b: In most countries, including in Europe, the H.264 patents have already expired. There you can use H.264 freely.Some patents remain valid in USA, Brazil and a few other countries.
VladVladikoff: I’m confused about this. If I have video on my website that is encoded in x264 am I obligated to pay fees?
adrian_b: Not if you are in Europe or in any other place where the H.264 patents have expired.The patents are still valid in USA, Brazil and a few other places.
silotis: *Claimed to still be valid.If you're just hosting videos on your website you are probably using High Profile which was standardized in March of 2005, i.e. more than 20 years ago. That doesn't stop VIA and MPEG-LA from claiming they still have relevant patents, but that claim is dubious and hasn't been tested in court.
ronsor: My advice (not a lawyer) is to ignore the licensing fees; the patents will all be dead by 2027 anyway.Also I'm not responsible for whatever happens if you do this.
adrian_b: There is no proof that their patent claims over AV1 or VP9 are valid.For now they try to bully some smaller companies with the threat of the big legal expenses that would be needed to fight these claims.
hollow-moe: Aren't VP9 and AV1 supposed to be "royalty free formats" ?
watermelon0: They are supposed to be, but Disney doesn't think so: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...Also, let's not forget that the majority of devices still don't have AV1 hardware decoding support. For example, Apple only recently (2023) added support with iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs.
adrian_b: The claims made by the Dolby that some H.265 patent claims that are formulated very vaguely also apply to AV1 are probably bogus.Like many other such frivolous patent lawsuits, Dolby hopes to either scare the other company into making a deal in order to avoid bigger legal expenses, or to establish a legal precedent if their cunning lawyers can convince a technically incompetent jury that the H.265 patents are applicable to AV1.This is the kind of trial that should have never been decided by a normal jury, but only by a panel of neutral experts in this field.
Noaidi: So should I re-encode all my videos to OGG? I’m really confused what this means for the average person who has home videos encoded in these formats.
embedding-shape: Unless you're running a platform with millions of users, where you use the codec to encode/decode video for others, you have absolutely nothing to worry about due to these news.
KronisLV: That's an insane amount.That makes me feel even more strongly about throwing proprietary and predatory codecs in the trash and opting to use AV1 et al wherever possible, it's better anyways and surely close to a decade after coming out, we'd expect devices to support it well enough.
Figs: > it's better anyways and surely close to a decade after coming out, we'd expect devices to support it well enough.A lot of people, myself included, are still using quite old hardware. The GPU in my daily driver is ~10 years old at this point. Between crypto, COVID, and this AI craze raising GPU costs by insane amounts, it hasn't made sense to replace it with something newer. I know I'm not alone on that...
skrrtww: Is a panel of 'neutral' experts even possible to field in this area? I feel like anyone with sufficiently in depth knowledge of both the AV1 and HEVC specs has almost certainly derived a big paycheck for years from stakeholders on one side or the other of these lawsuits.I'm no expert, but Google having designed AV1, I can certainly imagine a world where the codec infringes upon HEVC just enough that the lawsuit fees would come out in the wash.
mananaysiempre: > For example, Apple only recently (2023) added support [for AV1].Apple has been actively obstructing open video formats for a long long time—Apple is the reason there isn’t a baseline format for <video> in the HTML5 spec, for instance. (Or at least there wasn’t when the spec was still a well-defined document with a version number; I see no merit in keeping track of the “living” one.) Incidentally, Apple is a member of MPEG-LA and claims to hold numerous patents covering both AVC and HEVC.At this point, whatever harms befall Apple’s users due to lack of Apple’s lack of format support are entirely Apple’s fault.
adrian_b: You are right about the danger of non-neutral experts, but there still is an essential difference between a group of experts and a jury.The experts may be biased, but when they open the mouth and try to argue their position their bias becomes obvious for the other experts and it can be contradicted with logical arguments.Unless all the experts work for an interested party, it would be very difficult to impose an incorrect verdict, because it is impossible to argue in its favor without the mistakes in the argument being immediately exposed by an interlocutor.On the other hand, with a standard jury most people will be unable to see what is wrong in the arguments presented to them and they will not be able to distinguish truth from lies in such technical subjects.
Veliladon: The problem is that open codecs can still be encumbered by patents and the holders will sue. VP9 and AV1 have their own patent pool for that very reason. Google may have open sourced its codecs but if they don’t indemnify users people who think they’re safe might be in for a bad time.
jorvi: What I don't understand is why the AV1 pool isn't activating their MAD clause.Part of the idea with AV1 was that with the constituents also holding such a massive warchest of patents (plus big tech being richer than god), they would countersue and demolish anyone that tries to bully AV1 users.Where is all that might? Was it all just saber rattling, and are they basically going to let the AVC / HEVC patent holders make a fool out of them?
adrian_b: For now Dolby has just filed a lawsuit.If this will reach a trial, it remains to be seen whether Snap will fight alone or it will receive support.
userbinator: Trying to milk the last drop before the patents expire? H.264 patents have already expired in most of the world and the remaining ones, which might not even be necessary for the vast majority of H.264 use, are also approaching expiry very soon:https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...
charcircuit: Only if it is used commercially. If it is a free video you do not have to pay fees.
ndiddy: Note that there's some patents that haven't yet expired, at least in the US. AFAIK this is because if there's delays in patent examination you get extra duration on your patent to compensate. Here's a list of the patents that were filed before High Profile was standardized and are still valid: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...Of course MPEG-LA deliberately makes figuring out which patents cover which parts of H.264 (which is really a set of multiple standards spanning a 10+ year period) ambiguous and hard to determine in order to sell more licenses.
