[opendtv] HEVC Licensing Terms Not Done Yet
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 May 2014 12:04:58 -0400
http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0086/hevc-licensing-terms-not-done-yet--/270525
TVTechnology: HEVC Licensing Terms Not Done Yet
NEW YORK— While it had been hoped that a patent pool license for the High
Efficiency Video Coding compression scheme would be available from licensing
body MPEG LA by now, vendors that required this patented technology to build
their products are still waiting.
The new HEVC Patent Portfolio License will clear the way for manufacturers to
develop hardware-based compression boards based on it, software algorithms that
take advantage of it, and newly emerging decoding technology to enable all
video files to be displayed on Ultra HD TVs, computers, tablets, and smart
cellphones.
It’s also welcome news for encoder manufacturers like Ateme, Cinegy, Elemental
Technologies, Ericsson Harmonic and Wowza to name a few, which have clamored
for a resolution on the licensing terms so they can begin shipping units to
customers. Indeed, many vendors have already sent prototype units to key
customers, and monitoring usage, however small at this point, in order to test
the technology and see if the promised bandwidth savings, without affecting
image quality, are real.
“We hope to issue an HEVC license during the summer,” said Tom O’Reilly,
manager of Research and Public Relations at MPEG LA, LLC. “As I am sure you can
understand, it takes time to bring together so many parties each with their own
independent decision-making and approval process under the same agreements.”
Indeed, the holdup is reportedly surrounding the pooling of as many patent
holders as possible under a single license so that users have the option to pay
the fee to one organization, rather than to negotiate individual licenses with
each patent holder.
“As contemplated, the HEVC license will utilize a modern streamlined pool
licensing approach with simple easy-to-understand terms, making the technology
readily accessible to the largest possible market in the shortest possible
time,” said Larry Horn, MPEG LA president and CEO, in a statement in a release
announcing preliminary terms. “MPEG LA salutes the cooperation of patent owners
who have worked hard to reach common ground in making a joint patent license
available for the convenience of HEVC adopters.”
In January, MPEG LA released a preliminary fee structure, with parameters
similar to its H.264 license. Both H.264 and HEVC allow the first 100,000 units
to be used for free, and both charge $0.20 per unit (stream) after that.
However, with H.264, the royalty drops to $0.10 after 5 million units and is
capped at $6.5 million. While the HEVC Patent Portfolio License document has
not been made public at this point, O’Reilly said the HEVC royalty, which would
be capped at $25 million annually per licensee, may increase by limited amounts
at each renewal term.
The significant difference between H.264 (MPEG-4) and H.265 (HEVC) licensing
terms reflects the potential multiple—some still unknown—uses that new IP-based
video services will require in the future.
“There are always some business risks in trying to determine what the licensing
structure will be and then developing a product that fits our business models,”
said Keith Wymbs, vice president of marketing at software-based encoding
technology supplier Elemental Technologies. “We believe earlier disclosures on
the HEVC Patent Portfolio License is a best case scenario for the entire
industry.”
MPEG LA has said HEVC and MPEG-H Part 2 standard, has been designed to improve
video coding and, thus, video streaming for Internet and mobile service
providers. It is also said by others in the industry that HEVC reduces the data
rate needed for video coding by 50 percent when compared to the current
state-of-the-art, H.264 while delivering better image quality. That extra
bandwidth gained through HEVC compression is sorely needed, as files get bigger
and ever greater in number.
Under the original proposal, royalty fees for HEVC products were supposed to be
paid retroactively from May 1, 2013, but this has been suspended pending the
final licensing terms.
“As MPEG LA is not yet offering an HEVC license, no royalties are due to MPEG
LA at this time,” O’Reilly said. “However, when MPEG LA does issue an HEVC
license, royalties will be payable for HEVC products from May 1, 2013 forward.”
Another issue that will be part of the final licensing agreement: There are no
content-related royalties assessable to those who sell content on a
subscription, pay per stream or pay per download basis. This will save
companies like Adobe Systems, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft and others significant
sums of money.
“Per the HEVC license terms that have been announced, there will be no separate
royalties for HEVC content,” O’Reilly said, “but that only pertains to
royalties payable to MPEG LA for the benefit of HEVC patent holders with regard
to their patents under the License.Any remuneration between content owners and
resellers of that content is a matter entirely separate from royalties payable
for the patent license to be negotiated and determined by those parties.”
In addition, content distributors are not mandated to use HEVC and in fact some
(Google) have stated they will instead use VP9, an open and royalty-free
compression standard being developed by Google.
As of January, the list of essential patent holders that have agreed on
preliminary HEVC license terms includes: Apple Inc., British Broadcasting
Corporation, Cisco Technology, Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute of Korea, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten
Forschung e.V., Hitachi Maxell, Ltd., Humax Co., Ltd., JVC Kenwood Corp., KT
Corp., LG Electronics Inc., M&K Holdings Inc., NEC Corp., Nippon Hoso Kyokai,
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., NTT Docomo, Inc., Orange SA, Siemens AG,
SK Telecom, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Thomson Licensing, and Vidyo, Inc.
Apparently, four companies that have signed on have asked not to be identified.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
- » [opendtv] HEVC Licensing Terms Not Done Yet - Craig Birkmaier
