[opendtv] Re: FCC Opens ATSC Patent Costs Proceedings
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:23:53 -0400
At 12:29 PM -0400 9/16/09, John Shutt wrote:
Is not the core of ATSC based upon the MPEG-2 transport stream
structure? John Willkie would know infinitely more than I on that,
but that's what I vaguely recall.
John
----- Original Message ----- From: "Manfredi, Albert E"
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
I don't understand why MPEG LA becomes tied to ATSC in any way.
MPEG-2 TS is a small part of the ATSC standard, and to the best of my
knowledge, the price for the rights to MPEG-2 TS and an MPEG-2
decoder are no different when included in the ATSC patent pool than
they are if paid separately. But there are MANY other chunks of IP
(intellectual property) covered by the ATSC patent pool that is
administered by MPEG-LA. There include the royalties for the VSB
patents, the audio systems, and the various data signaling systems.
The ATSC chose to use MPEG-LA to administer the patent pool since it
has some overlapping standards and the infrastructure in place to
deal with collection of these royalties. That being said, the ATSC
pool is not complete; one must ALSO pay separate royalties to Sony
and Thomson to cover everything.
Seems a bit late for the FCC to be sticking its nose under this tent.
The damage is done.
At least one can now understand why so many companies spent so much
to develop the ATSC standard. To bad the world is now moving on...
21 x 9 displays
1080 @ 50/60P
Extended color gamuts
H.264
But the patent holders will still be able to milk this for a few more
years. What is really amazing is that most of the IP was ready to go
into the public domain in 1992. The real work of the ATSC companies
involved re-inventing this old IP so they could get another 20 years
of royalties - much of the rework involved the coding of interlace,
which did not belong in the standard anyway.
Oh well. Time to brew another beer!
Regards
Craig
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