MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired (mpegla.com) 144
New submitter jabuzz writes: Unless you live in the Philippines or Malaysia, then MPEG-2 has now joined the likes of MP3 and AC3 and gone patent free with the expiration of US patent 7,334,248.
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DVB-S
Re:What does that mean? (Score:5, Informative)
it is used everywhere.
dvd format still exists, and they're still sold (the expiry doesn't address dmca concerns regarding the easily-broken css encryption, however).
some games and software use it as a lighter-weight (as in negligible cpu cost) format for included video clips.
digital broadcast standards use it as well.
Re:What does that mean? (Score:5, Funny)
Is the patent relevant to modern computing? No. Could this prevent the trolling of retro engineering and homebrew projects? Yes. So let's all enjoy the thought of a parasite lawyer starving to death in a back alley, his last meal being the spunk of a truck driver named Leeroy and the only money in his pocket coming from Leeroy's copy of Monopoly.
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"So let's all enjoy the thought of a parasite lawyer starving to death in a back alley, his last meal being the spunk of a truck driver named Leeroy and the only money in his pocket coming from Leeroy's copy of Monopoly."
That's...weirdly specific.
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>Is the patent relevant to modern computing?
As network capacities increase, the efficiency of the coding should matter less. So presumably MPEG-2 is becoming more relevant over time.
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But as capacities increase, we want to create higher and higher resolution videos, so we need the capacity back again.
Pretty sure there's a law or something about that ...
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But as more people move to mobile, capacities decrease - you can't assume everyone is sitting at their desktop any more.
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That's where I plan to dominate the world, by being the last one to still be using a desktop computer.
All that screen space and rapid keyboard entry. What could possibly go wrong?
Re:What does that mean? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of live HD distribution is still done in MPEG2. Why? The coding delay for MPEG2 is a lot lower than for h264/HVEC/whatever the latest fancy is. Not a big deal when dealing with canned material, but a huge factor in dealing with live material. It's the difference between an 18Mbps stream (for MPEG2 HD) vs 6Mbps (h.264), but also the difference between 0.5 seconds of encoding delay vs 2 or 3 seconds.
Also, the broadcast industry is incredibly stingy when it comes to spending money, especially capital expenditures. MPEG2 encoders are pretty cheap at this point, whereas MPEG4 are 10x the cost.
Re: What does that mean? (Score:1)
I actually thought for a moment about hardware based on it, but I assumed it wasnâ(TM)t being made any more for commercial use.
Re:What does that mean? (Score:5, Informative)
Cost shouldn't be an issue. Broadcast equipment typically costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The addition of a few dollars for a GPU with hardware h.264 encode (now commonly found on phones and tablets) would be trivial.
I suspect the issue is simply foot dragging due to backwards compatibility. If you want your HD distribution broadcast to work with the largest number of legacy client devices, MPEG2 is what you need to use. Switching to MPEG4/h.264 would require the cable company send out a newer cable box to all those customers who've been dutifully been paying $15/mo to rent a cable box which was paid off a decade ago.
comcast did there MEPG2 HD turn off SD is still (Score:2)
comcast did there MEPG2 HD turn off SD is still on it (as well old junk like DCT-2000 boxes) and locals are still at MEPG2 pass through.
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Cost shouldn't be an issue. Broadcast equipment typically costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The addition of a few dollars for a GPU with hardware h.264 encode (now commonly found on phones and tablets) would be trivial.
Yes, but commercial broadcasters are allergic to capital expenditures. I used to work for a company that built flyaway satellite uplinks that could do live TV broadcasts in real time via satellite. They weren't cheap, on the order of $150,000. Anyhow, we were trying to sell one to one of the national broadcasters covering the war in Afghanistan. We pointed out that currently, their on-site crew would produce a package, and then upload it via Inmarsat BGAN. It would cost some $5000, and take 4 hours, to upli
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Yeah, that's called a budget. The operating expenses were already budgeted for, a capital outlay for your system was not. During the next planning cycle they could decide whether to spend some capital money on your system or something else.
The only companies that spend capital without going through a budget cycle are startups burning though VC money.
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The only companies that spend capital without going through a budget cycle are startups burning though VC money.
Or privately held.
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In-home streaming typically doesn't have multiple multi-cast channels that the user can switch between and expect to sync. Whenever you change the channel, you have to wait for a keyframe, which are less frequent in more efficient formats.
Re:What does that mean? (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of live HD distribution is still done in MPEG2. Why? The coding delay for MPEG2 is a lot lower than for h264/HVEC/whatever the latest fancy is. Not a big deal when dealing with canned material, but a huge factor in dealing with live material. It's the difference between an 18Mbps stream (for MPEG2 HD) vs 6Mbps (h.264), but also the difference between 0.5 seconds of encoding delay vs 2 or 3 seconds.
That's not an inherent problem of the spec, and hasn't been true for over half a decade:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150306225444/http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249 [archive.org]
(it's even better today)
I've set up live streams with x264 as an encoder with a guaranteed
encoding latency of under 150ms. On commodity hardware.
Also, the broadcast industry is incredibly stingy when it comes to spending money, especially capital expenditures. MPEG2 encoders are pretty cheap at this point, whereas MPEG4 are 10x the cost.
Yeah, commercial ones. I've been surprised several times by how free-software-averse
the whole broadcasting industry is: They'd rather buy a commercial encoder for $bignum
purchase + recurring $bignum2 support fee instead of using a superior setup that's based
on x264, would cost them about $bignum/10 for the initial setup, and then nothing to run for as
long as they'd like. I'd even deliver the whole documentation on how to run everything, so they
wouldn't need me again.
It's frustratingly hard to make "No need, I'll document and show you how to fix everything yourself"
an accepted answer to "But who do we call if something goes wrong?", even in cases where
they already have very capable and qualified people in-house.
Unfortunately, there's a pretty good inverse correlation between price and quality for H.264
encoders: The more expensive they are, the more they suck.
And that's were the latency problem tends to come in (and the encoding efficiency problem, and
the picture quality problem, and...).
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I've been surprised several times by how free-software-averse the whole broadcasting industry is: They'd rather buy a commercial encoder for $bignum
purchase + recurring $bignum2 support fee instead of using a superior setup that's based on x264, would cost them about $bignum/10 for the initial setup, and then nothing to run for as long as they'd like. I'd even deliver the whole documentation on how to run everything, so they wouldn't need me again.
Isn't the problem more the case of "if you want that particular camera then it emits xyz codec. Oh, you want to edit that video? Well, you need to license the codec."
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I would hope it would be hard to make that argument. Who would be dumb enough to fall for it? Basically what you are saying is "bet your business on me, and once you pay me you are on your own".
"I'll document it and show you how to fix everything yourself" pretty much means "besides the documentation, I have no special knowledge or skills that could help you if/when something goes wrong, but trust me, this is the best thing ever". Do you really expect anyone to fall for that?
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I would hope it would be hard to make that argument. Who would be dumb enough to fall for it? Basically what you are saying is "bet your business on me, and once you pay me you are on your own".
No, what I'm saying is:
"I'll help you with the setup, and if you want to, you can run
it yourself further on. I'll show your staff how everything works.
No need to keep paying me."
"I'll document it and show you how to fix everything yourself" pretty much means "besides the documentation, I have no special knowledge or skills that could help you if/when something goes wrong, but trust me, this is the best thing ever".
No, it means "I have all the special knowledge and skills that could help you,
but I won't withhold them from you to force you to keep on paying me:
I'll teach/show you how to do it yourself.
Of course, you can ask me for help any time if there's something you don't want to do alone."
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The service contract is basically insurance. So when it hits the fan you are guaranteed someone there to help with the situation who is an expert with the software. Yes you say that you'll be there for them any time, but there's no guarantee. Say you took a vacation, say you got in a car accident and are now dead and the guys you trained have since moved on, and the new guys are having trouble with the documentation.
At my last job, free software was fine for anything that wasn't deemed critical. But for cri
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You may not intend your words to mean what I said, but they do. While you want to portray paid service contracts as some sort of vendor lock in and something customers are forced into, companies don't view them that way. They view support contracts for what they are: contracts. They are a guarantee that you will be there to help them if they need it, and if you aren't, they have legal recourse against you. Absent a paid contract they have no such guarantee.
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I would hope it would be hard to make that argument. Who would be dumb enough to fall for it? Basically what you are saying is "bet your business on me, and once you pay me you are on your own".
"I'll document it and show you how to fix everything yourself" pretty much means "besides the documentation, I have no special knowledge or skills that could help you if/when something goes wrong, but trust me, this is the best thing ever". Do you really expect anyone to fall for that?
Sounds a lot like our expectations as consumers of cellphones. Modern software, even for the likes of free and open source (Firefox, Chromium, Android OSP) takes a particular cynical twist on that whole "if something goes wrong when we deprecate X for no good reason..."
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They're not so much paying for the software, they're paying for the support. The cost for the software often includes a support contract so when it all goes south 10 minutes before broadcast then can not only get all their own hands on deck, but they can bring in a paid expert from the company to help them through the process.
This fact is the biggest problem with most free software out there. If it's not a defacto standard, then the support options are few and far between. If something goes wrong, I don't w
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would cost them about $bignum/10 for the initial setup, and then nothing to run for as long as they'd like.
So you are saying no service the moment it is set up, no help with bugs, no help with features missed in the initial spec. . Just a brand new legacy installation with nobody to maintain it.
That's quite far from what I'm saying. I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.
I'm quite happy to help further on. That's part of how I make a living.
I don't insist on a service contract however, and my existing
customers appreciate that quite a bit.
You also missed the part about "there's competent in-house staff".
So:
But thanks
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Do you seriously care if you see the touchdown in a Superbowl match a second before some guy 2000 miles away?
Re:What does that mean? (Score:5, Informative)
The most obvious and probably most common usage is over-the-air broadcasts. Combined with the patent expiration of AC3 last year, this probably means sets with built-in tuners can be produced without any licensing fees... estimates were as high as $50 per set for these fees.
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And DVD's... even many Blu-ray discs use MPEG-2, especially at the beginning.
When you're using a medium for which bandwidth or size isn't a problem, there's nothing wrong with MPEG-2. Many of the first (high-def) Blu-ray discs used MPEG-2.
The original analog broadcast formats are still widespread, and in many cases, are still better quality than their digital replacements.
I'm pretty sure AM radio is "forever" because it's so simple to make a receiver in an emergency [wikipedia.org].
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The original analog broadcast formats are still widespread, and in many cases, are still better quality than their digital replacements.
What? Digital television has much quality better than analog under pretty much every circumstance. Just eliminating composite color dots is a huge improvement, not to mention the resolution increase and progressive scanning. Quality is really only a problem when the broadcaster tries to cram too many streams into a broadcast signal and starves the video of bits.
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Not all of the analog formats are video formats.
For example, the first generation of DAB radio (used in Europe) used MPEG-1 Audio level 2, with a maximum of 128 kbit/s of bandwidth. The end result was notably worse sound quality than the analog FM signal they replaced.
It was a problem built-in to the standard, though: it wasn’t because it’s digital.
The problem is that broadcast standards need to be long-lived: nobody wants to go buy all new televisions or radios every few years. That’s wh
Re: What does that mean? (Score:2)
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MP3 is the audio layer (MPEG-2, third layer) of MPEG-2, isn't it? Maybe I'm wrong, it's been a very long time.
Pretty much every device on the planet has MP3 support. Also it would be great to have patent-free/patent unobstructed DVD player software; plus the idea that you can generate DVDs royalty free. A huge, huge chunk of the world still depends on street vendor pirate videos, although I think they've moved to MP4 and/or h.264 or whatever the latest standard is (I've lost track).
But billi
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MP3 is MPEG-1, not MPEG-2. Known MP3 patents expired sometime last year (specific date appears to depend on who you ask).
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MP3 is MPEG-1, not MPEG-2. Known MP3 patents expired sometime last year (specific date appears to depend on who you ask).
Will this MP3 and MPEG-2 combo result in finally getting US distros like Red Hat derivatives to build in support without incantations for alternative repositories and Lame (ha) combinations of gstreamer names?
I miss the wild, valiant days of Mandrake 7, where apparently nobody cared for scary patent click-thru warnings yet.
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Also it would be great to have patent-free/patent unobstructed DVD player software; plus the idea that you can generate DVDs royalty free.
I could be wrong, but, unfortunately, I believe there are other DVD patents besides MPEG-2 that are still in effect:
www.dvd6cla.com/list.html
http://www.one-red.com/license-programs/one-red-dvd-disc-and-dvd-player-license-programs/patent-lists
http://one-red.com/en/license-programs/one-red-dvd-disc-and-dvd-player-license-programs/dvd-software#!tab4
At least one of those has an 8 year extension and doesn't expire until 2023. That one is titled as related to Subtitles, so maybe it's possible to write software t
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Depends. The DVD specification was published more than 20 years ago now. That is *ABSOLUTE* prior art. So any patent filed after that is in most sane places garbage junk. For the USA unless that subtitle patent was filed prior to 8th June 1995 and has an impressive extension it's also junk. Most of the DVD patents I believe apply to reading the physical discs, in particular things like a DVD-R disc that came out after the original standard.
However looking at that website I randomly took US 7,082,257, which
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However looking at that website I randomly took US 7,082,257, which it claims expires 18th December this year for expiration. Hum checking on the web it was filed 12th April 1996, which means as it was filed after the 8th June 1995, it expires 20 years after filing which was 13th April 2016. There are lots of false claims by people holding patents on their expiration dates.
I'm not an IP lawyer, but if you follow the link to the USPTO from google's page, and then click images you get this: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?D... [uspto.gov] Which shows that the patent has an extension of 616 days. It is itself a continuation of another patent that was filed on April 11, 1997 in the US (and is based on a Japanese patent filed on April 12, 1996, which is where you got your date), just under what I believe is the 1 year limit when filing for a US patent based on a patent in another country. April
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Which is the general problem with software patients.
While patients are to protect the inventor from people stealing their work, the Software industry moves too fast, so by the time it goes off patent it is mostly worthless.
For software patients a 5 year limit should be in place. Giving time to be sold and marketed. However when it gets off patient it isn't ancient technology, just not leading edge.
Other technologies that have been patented the 20 years is a good time frame, allowing the idea to be develope
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The operation was a success, but the patent died.
5 year limit for drugs as well. (Score:1)
5 year limit for drugs as well.
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Nope MPEG2 used AC3 which expired last year from memory, a bit before MP3.
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Well I have never seen a MPEG2 video stream with an AAC sound track that has been produced commercially. DVD's use an AC3 soundtrack (at least all mine do with sometimes a DTS one as well) and here in the UK the broadcast MPEG2 via DVB-T is all MP2 soundtracks.
The AAC format has been evolving for a long time so what do you exactly mean by AAC? The original specification MPEG-2 Part 7 is free of patents,
Unfortunately there are lots of other AAC profiles that are still under patent protection, and the MPEG4 m
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Well at least the Taliban wont get sued for patent infringement next time they hack predator drone feeds, so there's that.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/... [schneier.com]
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DAB (Digital Audion Broadcasting) uses the shitty MPEG-2 codec (in the UK, often at woefully low bitrates).
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Considering how microprocessors or ASICs are, I would rather have the higher compression of newer codecs. But without nasty patents.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I no longer need to buy the license for my Raspberry Pi XBMC unit?
Where do I get my free key to open that up?
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Not necessarily. The license key unlocks the hardware decode unit. Broadcom no longer needs to pay patent licenses for MPEG-2 (though they may have a contract that requires them to pay for devices even after the patents expire), but they are under no obligation to pass that saving on to you.
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Well, since no more infringment of the mpeg2 license is possible now, apparently there is already a patch to bypass the license checking and enable the GPU encoding/decoding of MPEG-2 video on the raspberry.
Patch for MPEG-2, VC-1 license [reddit.com]
cd /boot
cp start.elf start.elf_backup && \
perl -pne 's/\x47\xE9362H\x3C\x18/\x47\xE9362H\x3C\x1F/g' < start.elf_backup > start.elf
Re: So? (Score:3)
The patents on the design expired. This just means that anyone can write their own MPEG2 system.
Specific implementations are still covered by copyright and possible licensing, just like any new implentation tomorrow.
The idea is free. The code is not necessarily free.
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There are already free (as in freedom) implementations that were only encumbered by patent.
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Neat, and obvious (oh hi VLC and mencoder!) but.
If you really think that the set-in-silicone hardware decoder on a Raspberry Pi MPEG2 encoder is free (as in libre), I've got a bridge to sell you.
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Certainly wasn't free, as it was already designed and produced under license. Wanna be the next generation of hardware encoders are free? (as in beer, to the manufacturer)
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Maybe. But will we still care enough by that point to bother with hardware MPEG2?
The baby-daddy of all of the Pi-like creations is the Broadcom catalog, not custom silicone.
What motivation would Broadcom have to use an open hardware design in their chips, instead of the existing design that works fine?
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They won't do it for the Pi specifically, but they'll do it for Blu-Ray/DVD Players and TVs.
I have no idea whether Broadcom licenses their design or created it in-house. If they licence it, they'd have incentive to redesign it to save on fees. At the very least, they can kill the DRM circuitry that makes sure you have a license to use the on-board MPEG-2 decoding.
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They may have a contractual agreement to pay per-seat licensing for a very long time. We don't know their arrangement and have no way to know. (Why would they do this? For a better deal on licensing and royalties early on. The licensor would also adore this concept; companies love lasting residual income for zero additional effort.)
Either way, in all likelihood, all existing product was produced under an agreement that is still binding for that particular instance of product. Contracts are assholes tha
Re: So? (Score:4, Interesting)
To put it in perspective, two days ago was the 28th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. 3 in the US.
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Off patent doesn't mean public domain.
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Unnecessary. (Score:2, Interesting)
The mpeg2 key was just used to 'unlock' a software implementation in the VC4 firmware. It was trash anyways.
Basically all you need now is the open source VC4 drivers, or the open source vc4 gcc port and you can compile up mpeg2 for it at the same power usage as the real thing, completely bypassing the firmware requirement.
Not sure if they finished display output yet, but there is an open source VC4 bootstrap firmware now, as well as broadcom documentation on the VC4 opcodes so you could write/optimize your
Re:Not really that relevant anymore. (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm hoping the £2.40 fee [raspberrypi.com] for unlocking MPEG2 on Raspberry Pi goes away soon.
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Why would it? You're not paying it for royalties, you're paying it for unlocking Broadcom's locked down product.
What really will happen now is that Broadcom's profit margin will go up when you pay the fee.
IANAL (Score:2)
Well I mean theoretically I can finally apply and redistribute the well known hack [reddit.com] without violating any laws.
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Is all of DVD off patent (including CSS) now?
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Deep learning systems generating candy heart messages [npr.org]
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Man, this is the INTERNET... I'll have seven propositions under this post.
Philippines and Malaysia (Score:4, Insightful)
The news is that some countries are actually worse than the US regarding patents.
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The list seems to me quite long. How the hell there are still five Malaysian and two Philippines ones left god only knows. Most of the US ones expired a considerable period of time ago. There where just two left this year, one expired at the end of January and the last one yesterday.
The patents in question are apparerntly (according the MPEG-LA) below. How one finds out when they expire is an open question. I could find nothing about them on the web.
MY 118172-A
MY 1289941
MY 141626-A
MY 118444
MY 118734-A
PH 1-1
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GE technology appears to have two other possibly relevant Malaysian patent applications first filed in the US in 1993, one was granted last year and another is still under examination, so they may be able to drag this out until at least 2032 if MPEG-LA are still accepting new patents
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Interesting the FAQ from the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines says terms is 20 years from international filing so unless they had a different system in the past they are telling lies and those patents long expired.
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Patently ... (Score:2)
... correct.
Important for HDTV (Score:5, Interesting)
HDTV in the United States uses ATSC, which is a transport stream for MPEG-2. Most cable companies still use MPEG-2, though I believe the satellite companies have switched.
While this only means a $2 reduction in the cost to make a TV, it also means a $2 reduction in the cost of streaming devices capable of playing TV signals. That's significant when you're talking about a Roku stick, which is why they skipped the license fee and don't support it. That means you can't use a Roku as a frontend for MythTV without transcoding your recordings, and you can't use a Roku as a frontend for a HDPrime networked cable card tuner.
All that can change now. I don't know if existing hardware that Roku uses can support MPEG-2, but if it does, then they could add support with just a software update. The same with all the other similar devices that may not have supported MPEG-2 in the past.
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Not sure about the latest boxes, but Roku's for a long time where same chipset as a Raspberry Pi and as such have hardware decoding though not available presumably for licensing reasons.
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I don't know if existing hardware that Roku uses can support MPEG-2, but if it does, then they could add support with just a software update. The same with all the other similar devices that may not have supported MPEG-2 in the past.
Why fix something they already paid for when they can just make you pay for it again with a software upgrade? That's capitalism.
We should write a codec (Score:1)
That is designed to progressively get better as patents expire. That way we get the best video codec over time.
Baseline, main, and high profile (Score:2)
It's annoying to quote you if you start a comment in the subject and finish it in the body.
In theory, many MPEG video codecs are structured like that. They have a "baseline profile", a "main profile", and a "high profile". But depending on the relationship among the patent encumbrances of the profiles, the higher profiles might not take off. Consider the example of arithmetic coding in JPEG. No popular encoder or decoder supported arithmetic coding because the expiration of its patent was so far after the r
Whew.... (Score:3)
Now I can stop paying all those licensing fees that I've been sending all these years!
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You can also stop registering your DOS shareware.
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Brought a DVD, DVD player, BluRay player, digital TV, set top box in the last decade? Then you have paid an MPEG2 license fee for the privilege. Indirectly you have been paying for your over the air broadcaster to use MPEG2 to encode the TV you are watching. So yes you can now stop paying those fees.
Why? (Score:1)
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Because Mickey Mouse.
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Because Democracy.
Democracy is a powerful piece of propoganda that causes a population to willingly acquiesce to a much smaller ruling class. Some of the rent-seekers in this ruling class, notably Disney's owners, rely on the effectiveness of democracy to have the masses accept and defend nonsense like copyright law.
Captcha: disobeys
MPEGTS is what makes this important! (Score:1)
Forget the video part of the MPEG-2 standard (part 2). While it's used on DVDs and was used on early HD-DVDs and Blurays it's a dying standard with only a few niche use cases going forward.
What's really important is Part 1 of the MPEG-2 standard, MPEGTS. MPEGTS is used in all DVDs, Blurays, cable tv and sattelite broadcasts, military drones, pretty much anything where there are multiple streams of synchronized data (video, audio, closed captioning, telemetry, etc). This is probably the most heavily used por
This last patent was a NO-Op for most folks (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, the "interesting" video codec patents expired many years ago. You can peruse them here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The last patent is entitled "Conditional access filter as for a packet video signal inverse transport system" applied to cable systems and satellite broadcast, but basically doesn't apply to program streams (which is what is used in DVD and created by most MPEG2 A/V multiplexers).
There were some streaming and DVR-like systems that recorded transport streams directly and used them, but not really any "free" stuff (which might use packet formats like MKVs) . Of course now it is totally moot...
Comment (Score:2)
Great! Now I can rip my LPs!