Video Breakthroughs

With a lot of conversations evolving around MPEG-DASH during NAB this year, including the joint Adobe / Akamai MPEG-DASH streaming demo, the question prevails: is MPEG-DASH more than a science project, and has true potential to become a future streaming standard?

What appears to be clear is the consensus that HLS has deficiencies, but are the differences important enough to motivate the industry to migrate from established HLS support on devices to MPEG-DASH?

Mike Downey, Principal Evangelist, Media Platform at Microsoft, provided some interesting comments on HLS on my previous PHDS blog post, with a different perspective – potential HLS licensing complications.

HEVC encoding and decoding technology is “ready for primetime,” but licensing negotiations are holding up real-world deployments.

While it was clear from walking the exhibit floor in Amsterdam that HEVC encoding and decoding technology is now “ready for primetime” as Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental technologies put it, the licensing negotiations now underway between MPEG LA, the standardizing body, and those that would implement the patented technology into their products (consumer electronics companies and broadcast equipment suppliers), are holding back real-world deployments.

 

According to Blackman, companies like Apple, Samsung and others now have the technology to utilize HEVC, but they don’t dare for fear of having to pay billions in licensing fees. Although there has been no official comment on the negotiations, word on the street is that MPEG LA is seeking a $20 million cap on single users, whereas they receive roughly a $7 million cap for the use of H.264 today. The big difference reflects the potential multiple uses that new IP-based video services will require in the future.

What’s clear at this point is that multiple companies have patents relating to HEVC technology, and they plan to ask for royalties from those who use their technology. This was the case with H.264 as well, and though many in the streaming industry grumbled about the royalties, this disgruntlement certainly didn’t limit H.264’s success. 

 

Two things are different with HEVC. First, where H.264 involved a single group of patent holders administered by MPEG LA, it appears that some HEVC patent holders want to pursue royalties outside of a patent group, which will make it more challenging for HEVC users to license the technologies. According to “Patent Snafus Could Delay New Video Codec,” Mediatek and Qualcomm do not want to join the HEVC group formulated by MPEG LA, and Samsung hasn’t decided either way. 

 

Our contact at MPEG LA reported that while the HEVC group had met three times as of February 2013, there was still no guarantee that a group would be formed or that all patent holders would join the group. So it appears that HEVC early adopters will have to decide to implement the technology without knowing the cost. 

 

For large companies such as Adobe, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, that might be tenable; the H.264 license was capped, and it’s reasonable to assume that the HEVC license will also be capped. All four companies can amortize that cost over millions of product units shipped, and I think it’s highly likely that one or more of these companies will announce HEVC integration by NAB.