Why can't Google provide their CODEC for their app to use?
I think that might still be banned. For example, the original VLC app allowed for playback of all their regular media files, but Apple pulled the app for violating store regulations. When it returned, it was limited in its playback.
VP9 is fraught with patent liability as Google took a lot of the inventions in the MPEG standards and reverse engineered them up into a new codec and is giving it away for free. By having zero licensing fees due to this largely stolen open standard, and constant violations of copyright in their content library, this is how YouTube (and Google in general) makes a profitable business. Costs are so low because they copy IP/ software innovations and make them free to the end user (then monetize through ads). This is not news, folks.
4k/HDR on Youtube is a bit silly, though, since the quality of the content is generally garbage as well.
"Google Inc. and MPEG LA, LLC announced today that they have entered into agreements granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders. The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec. As a result of the agreements, MPEG LA will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool.
“This is a significant milestone in Google’s efforts to establish VP8 as a widely-deployed web video format,” said Allen Lo, Google’s deputy general counsel for patents. “We appreciate MPEG LA’s cooperation in making this happen.”
“We are pleased for the opportunity to facilitate agreements with Google to make VP8 widely available to users,” said MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn."
Some partial licenses on patents don't make a licensee a "standard". This is the scope of the settlement that matters and that report does not carry any information about whether those licenses are full or partial. If you examine Intel's support of HEVC and VP9, you'll see that VP9 hardware implementations are considerably behind the HEVC hardware implementations and correlating that to the scope of the licensing is very plausible.
It says "techniques essential to VPx" not "techniques essential to H.265 or H.264". "We authorize you to use some of our patented techniques"... That's it.
I'm not clear on the point you're trying to make. MPEG makes it eminently clear that Google is not under any threat from their organization for any potential IP issues (and they make no claim there are anyway) for either VP8 or 9, and that Google is free to re-license with no royalty obligations. . Are you disagreeing with them and if so based on what?
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
No, fuck WEBM. What niche does it fill that other codecs didn’t serve? It’s only a competitor to HEVC because Google forces it.
Webm is a container not a codec. I guess you mean VP9.
The problem with HEVC is that the codec is much more expensive that its predecessors. There are several licensing pools (unlike for H.264 which had a single one).
The H.264 codec had a license fee of $0.10 per device, 100,0000 waver and an annual cap of $6.5 million.
The HEVC codec has a minimum cost per device of more than $2, a cap of 60 million which could go up to 100 million if new requests by Technicolor are incorporated.
That's very expensive - at least 20 times as expensive per unit and the cap is at least 10 times higher. While the H.264 fees were reasonable this is no longer the case for HEVC.
That's why Google is pushing VP9 and that's why the Alliance for Open Media is developing the AV1 codec (which is really VP10 plus some extra contributions from other companies). All of those are royalty free.
VP9 is about 20% less efficient than HEVC but more efficient than H.264 and AV1 is supposed to be 20% better than HEVC before the format is frozen. For HD and 4K content the difference between VP9 and HEVC is smaller.
The initial royalty rates for HEVC were even higher - the only reason that the patent pools lowered them was the existence of VP9.
My guess is that Apple negotiated a special deal with the patent pools - this makes sense for Apple but not necessarily for the rest of the industry (which Apple might like - why not stick it to Google and Netflix and saddle them with the high HEVC royalty rates).
It will be interesting to see whether Apple's support for HEVC will make it pull ahead of VP9 and AV1. Right now, H.264 is still sufficient for many applications and on mobile devices with unlimited plans that down-sample video anyway it doesn't really matter.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in media streaming on board including Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon.
Standard and support are not the same thing. When you comply with a standard that means your content will be encoded and decoded on every certified hardware and software platform. Support is conjunctural, loose and uncontrolled. You will never know to what extent the supporting brands you mention have implemented that codec, to what extent they support it. Intel discloses it, but the others may never disclose. That means some media will play, some won’t, this is just “open” wilderness as is the case with every “open” codec.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
No, fuck WEBM. What niche does it fill that other codecs didn’t serve? It’s only a competitor to HEVC because Google forces it.
Webm is a container not a codec. I guess you mean VP9.
The problem with HEVC is that the codec is much more expensive that its predecessors. There are several licensing pools (unlike for H.264 which had a single one).
The H.264 codec had a license fee of $0.10 per device, 100,0000 waver and an annual cap of $6.5 million.
The HEVC codec has a minimum cost per device of more than $2, a cap of 60 million which could go up to 100 million if new requests by Technicolor are incorporated.
That's very expensive - at least 20 times as expensive per unit and the cap is at least 10 times higher. While the H.264 fees were reasonable this is no longer the case for HEVC.
That's why Google is pushing VP9 and that's why the Alliance for Open Media is developing the AV1 codec (which is really VP10 plus some extra contributions from other companies). All of those are royalty free.
VP9 is about 20% less efficient than HEVC but more efficient than H.264 and AV1 is supposed to be 20% better than HEVC before the format is frozen. For HD and 4K content the difference between VP9 and HEVC is smaller.
The initial royalty rates for HEVC were even higher - the only reason that the patent pools lowered them was the existence of VP9.
My guess is that Apple negotiated a special deal with the patent pools - this makes sense for Apple but not necessarily for the rest of the industry (which Apple might like - why not stick it to Google and Netflix and saddle them with the high HEVC royalty rates).
It will be interesting to see whether Apple's support for HEVC will make it pull ahead of VP9 and AV1. Right now, H.264 is still sufficient for many applications and on mobile devices with unlimited plans that down-sample video anyway it doesn't really matter.
LOL! You and I are on the same page, both figuratively and literally.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in media streaming on board including Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon.
Standard and support are not the same thing. When you comply with a standard that means your content will be encoded and decoded on every certified hardware and software platform. Support is conjunctural, loose and uncontrolled. You will never know to what extent the supporting brands you mention have implemented that codec, to what extent they support it. Intel disclose it, but the others may never disclose. That means some media will play, some won’t, this is just “open” wilderness as is the case with every “open” codec.
That's not true - VP9 is royalty-free but the development of the codec has been tightly controlled by Google. Similarly, the AV1 codec (the VP9 successor based on VP10) is controlled by AOMEDIA.
There is a clearly defined bitstream. There are no "nightly" VP9 released or anything like that.
Otherwise hardware acceleration on Android phones wouldn't work because VP9 is heavily used for Youtube, Netflix etc.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in media streaming on board including Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon.
Standard and support are not the same thing. When you comply with a standard that means your content will be encoded and decoded on every certified hardware and software platform. Support is conjunctural, loose and uncontrolled. You will never know to what extent the supporting brands you mention have implemented that codec, to what extent they support it. Intel disclose it, but the others may never disclose. That means some media will play, some won’t, this is just “open” wilderness as is the case with every “open” codec.
Thanks for the very helpful reply. I get your point now. In this particular case considering the players involved and the broad-based support I don't think it's as much of an issue as you seem to think it is.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in media streaming on board including Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon.
Standard and support are not the same thing. When you comply with a standard that means your content will be encoded and decoded on every certified hardware and software platform. Support is conjunctural, loose and uncontrolled. You will never know to what extent the supporting brands you mention have implemented that codec, to what extent they support it. Intel disclose it, but the others may never disclose. That means some media will play, some won’t, this is just “open” wilderness as is the case with every “open” codec.
That's not true - VP9 is royalty-free but the development of the codec has been tightly controlled by Google.
So, Google is a “standard”... OK I see your point.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in media streaming on board including Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon.
Standard and support are not the same thing. When you comply with a standard that means your content will be encoded and decoded on every certified hardware and software platform. Support is conjunctural, loose and uncontrolled. You will never know to what extent the supporting brands you mention have implemented that codec, to what extent they support it. Intel disclose it, but the others may never disclose. That means some media will play, some won’t, this is just “open” wilderness as is the case with every “open” codec.
That's not true - VP9 is royalty-free but the development of the codec has been tightly controlled by Google.
So, Google is a “standard”... OK I see your point.
You are right - VP9 isn't a standard in the sense that it's not coordinated by the ITU.
But it has a clearly defined bitstream and has been implemented by Intel, AMD and multiple ARM vendors - most new TVs have it, too. Moreover, the source code is open and on github - so anyone use it to write their own encoder and decoder. Looks like a lot of buy-in to me.
Apple also guides the development of Swift while at the same time open-sourcing it in 2015 to give it more credibility as a programming language that can be taught at universites etc.
Vice versa, a standard doesn't imply that different implementations necessarily work the same. The Microsoft Word format is an official ECMA standard but it has been extremely difficult to write viewers that exactly reproduce MS Word output.
VP9 and Swift are more de-facto standards than the Office XML format because Google and Apple have a deep interest in steering these projects in a way that guarantees buy-in from third parties. AV1 has even more broad-based support with Intel, AMD, Netflix, Amazon. Microsoft all on board.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
Well to be more accurate that would be Google. And Intel. And Microsoft. And Netflix. And AMD. And Cisco. And Hulu. And Adobe. And Samsung. And ARM. And Nvidia. And Sony. And Broadcom. And Firefox. And the BBC. And Amazon. And Sigma. And...
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
Well to be more accurate that would be Google. And Intel. And Microsoft. And Netflix. And AMD. And Hulu. And Adobe. And Samsung. And Nvidia. And Sony. And Firefox. And the BBC. And Amazon. And Intel. And...
A good part of that list is required to support the VP9 because of google undermining the industry standard. Android devices are required to support VP9, Chromecast Ultra doesn't support H.265. So anyone building android devices and anyone building content that streams to chrome cast ultra has not choice but to support VP9 in addition to their support of the industry standard H.265, which is also the video format for UHD Blu Ray.
Again, it's Google, not Apple, who fails to support the industry standard.
Google has enormous influence over individuals, corporations and governments, and its increasing, so unless Apple does something the AppleTV will never get 4K youtube. Even now, the current youtube app on Apple TV lacks features taken for granted on other platforms, and it rarely gets updated. Google doesn't care about the youtube app on AppleTV.
Apple has even more enormous influence over individuals, corporations, and governments than Google does. You think Google can ignore 1 billion iOS users? It’s Google who will come around by transcoding their 4K HDR videos to work on the ATV5. Your statement is utter Google sycophancy.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
Well to be more accurate that would be Google. And Intel. And Microsoft. And Netflix. And AMD. And Hulu. And Adobe. And Samsung. And Nvidia. And Sony. And Firefox. And the BBC. And Amazon. And Intel. And...
A good part of that list is required to support the VP9 because of google undermining the industry standard. Android devices are required to support VP9, Chromecast Ultra doesn't support H.265. So anyone building android devices and anyone building content that streams to chrome cast ultra has not choice but to support VP9 in addition to their support of the industry standard H.265, which is also the video format for UHD Blu Ray.
Again, it's Google, not Apple, who fails to support the industry standard.
For the most part, this is because these companies don't want to pay 60-100 million a year to the HEVC licensing pools.
Whether HEVC will become "the" industry standard depends on overall support. Firewire was also a standard that didn't become popular (USB did). In most industries, there are multiple standards that often compete and licensing payments absolutely matter (for example, high license payments hampered Firewire initially).
If it weren't for VP9, the HEVC terms would be even more unfavorable: initially, the HEVC advance pool wanted 0.5% of gross *revenue* from Netflix, Amazon etc.
That is incredibly stupid of Apple to refuse to support free open standards.
Apple supports the industry standard - H.265, and has hardware acceleration to support this standard since the A9 chip VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
It's not as tho VP9 doesn't have broad-based industry support. ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, RealTek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba and probably a few that missed mention are all supporting partners and VP9 is integrated with Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge browsers. What would have been VP10 has now been contributed to the AV1 project being developed under the auspices of the Alliance for Open Media. That has some of the biggest players in mobile media on board including Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix, Hulu, the BBC, and Amazon, in addition to Google.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
Well to be more accurate that would be Google. And Intel. And Microsoft. And Netflix. And AMD. And Cisco. And Hulu. And Adobe. And Samsung. And ARM. And Nvidia. And Sony. And Broadcom. And Firefox. And the BBC. And Amazon. And Sigma. And...
Again, you view everything with rose colored Googles on. Those companies support both codecs. Google is choosing not to follow the standard but force their proprietary format instead.
Comments
VP9 is not a standard.
Google is the one refusing to support the industry standard, not Apple.
This whole attempt to portray Google as a lone wolf supporter of open media codecs and an industry outlier is very obviously FUD meant to serve some purpose other than factual. MPEG has worn out their welcome with much of the tech community. With Apple all in with HVEC Advance (which requires licensing from no less than 4 patent pools if I read right) I can see another Betamax vs. VHS on the horizon. With that said I do support Apple's play to replace JPEG with HEIF as long as they include support for AV1.
EDIT: For information on AV1, the membership and the goals, see here:
The problem with HEVC is that the codec is much more expensive that its predecessors. There are several licensing pools (unlike for H.264 which had a single one).
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/The-HEVC-Soap-Opera-Keeping-Track-of-Players-and-Costs-119090.aspx
The H.264 codec had a license fee of $0.10 per device, 100,0000 waver and an annual cap of $6.5 million.
The HEVC codec has a minimum cost per device of more than $2, a cap of 60 million which could go up to 100 million if new requests by Technicolor are incorporated.
That's very expensive - at least 20 times as expensive per unit and the cap is at least 10 times higher. While the H.264 fees were reasonable this is no longer the case for HEVC.
That's why Google is pushing VP9 and that's why the Alliance for Open Media is developing the AV1 codec (which is really VP10 plus some extra contributions from other companies). All of those are royalty free.
VP9 is about 20% less efficient than HEVC but more efficient than H.264 and AV1 is supposed to be 20% better than HEVC before the format is frozen. For HD and 4K content the difference between VP9 and HEVC is smaller.
The initial royalty rates for HEVC were even higher - the only reason that the patent pools lowered them was the existence of VP9.
My guess is that Apple negotiated a special deal with the patent pools - this makes sense for Apple but not necessarily for the rest of the industry (which Apple might like - why not stick it to Google and Netflix and saddle them with the high HEVC royalty rates).
It will be interesting to see whether Apple's support for HEVC will make it pull ahead of VP9 and AV1. Right now, H.264 is still sufficient for many applications and on mobile devices with unlimited plans that down-sample video anyway it doesn't really matter.
There is a clearly defined bitstream. There are no "nightly" VP9 released or anything like that.
Otherwise hardware acceleration on Android phones wouldn't work because VP9 is heavily used for Youtube, Netflix etc.
But it has a clearly defined bitstream and has been implemented by Intel, AMD and multiple ARM vendors - most new TVs have it, too. Moreover, the source code is open and on github - so anyone use it to write their own encoder and decoder. Looks like a lot of buy-in to me.
Apple also guides the development of Swift while at the same time open-sourcing it in 2015 to give it more credibility as a programming language that can be taught at universites etc.
Vice versa, a standard doesn't imply that different implementations necessarily work the same. The Microsoft Word format is an official ECMA standard but it has been extremely difficult to write viewers that exactly reproduce MS Word output.
VP9 and Swift are more de-facto standards than the Office XML format because Google and Apple have a deep interest in steering these projects in a way that guarantees buy-in from third parties. AV1 has even more broad-based support with Intel, AMD, Netflix, Amazon. Microsoft all on board.
The post I replied to criticized Apple for not implementing the standard. My reply simply said Apple did support the standard. no FUD, just statement of fact.
Google led is the one who is trying to undermine the standard with heir lack of support.
Again, it's Google, not Apple, who fails to support the industry standard.
Whether HEVC will become "the" industry standard depends on overall support. Firewire was also a standard that didn't become popular (USB did). In most industries, there are multiple standards that often compete and licensing payments absolutely matter (for example, high license payments hampered Firewire initially).
If it weren't for VP9, the HEVC terms would be even more unfavorable: initially, the HEVC advance pool wanted 0.5% of gross *revenue* from Netflix, Amazon etc.