[HN Gopher] Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k ...
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Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to
staggering $4.5M
Author : MaximilianEmel
Score : 120 points
Date : 2026-04-03 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomshardware.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomshardware.com)
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| what are the open source alternatives?
| charcircuit wrote:
| This is for patent licensing. Using an open source
| implementation doesn't get rid of your obligation to license
| the patents for it.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In most countries the H.264 patents have already expired, for
| instance in Europe they have expired, but in USA not yet (in
| USA most patents should expire towards the end of next year).
|
| So that firm might try to squeeze every penny they can before
| the expiration of the patents.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| AV1, as well as the older On2 codec series it was based off of
| (VP9, VP8, etc).
| topranks wrote:
| VP9, AV1
| chromacity wrote:
| As the article says, there are companies seeking royalties
| for both of these codecs.
| adrian_b wrote:
| There is no proof that their patent claims over AV1 or VP9
| are valid.
|
| For now they try to bully some smaller companies with the
| threat of the big legal expenses that would be needed to
| fight these claims.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| i don't think Snap Inc. and Amazon are small companies
| mook wrote:
| The funny thing about patent licensing alliances is that
| there's no guarantee that nobody else outside of the bloc
| will pop up and start suing people.
|
| Basically, you can consider AOM to be a licensing
| alliances, where the fee is zero.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Seeking is not getting, not even close. Suggesting it is
| only supports their propaganda and adds momentum to their
| bogus race to a cash grab.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In most countries, including in Europe, the H.264 patents have
| already expired. There you can use H.264 freely.
|
| Some patents remain valid in USA, Brazil and a few other
| countries.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| Aren't VP9 and AV1 supposed to be "royalty free formats" ?
| adrian_b wrote:
| They have been created with the express purpose of avoiding
| incidents like this.
|
| Instead of paying the ransom, a streaming company should
| transcode their movies to a royalty-free format, like AV1 or
| VP9.
|
| Even big companies like Dell have preferred to disable the
| H.265 codecs in the computers they sell, instead of accepting
| similar demands for greatly increased royalties, and I think
| that it was the right choice.
| watermelon0 wrote:
| They are supposed to be, but Disney doesn't think so:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...
|
| Also, let's not forget that the majority of devices still don't
| have AV1 hardware decoding support. For example, Apple only
| recently (2023) added support with iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The claims made by Dolby that some H.265 patent claims that
| are formulated very vaguely also apply to AV1 are probably
| bogus.
|
| Like many other such frivolous patent lawsuits, Dolby hopes
| to either scare the other company into making a deal in order
| to avoid bigger legal expenses, or to establish a legal
| precedent if their cunning lawyers can convince a technically
| incompetent jury that the H.265 patents are applicable to
| AV1.
|
| This is the kind of trial that should have never been decided
| by a normal jury, but only by a panel of neutral experts in
| this field.
| skrrtww wrote:
| Is a panel of 'neutral' experts even possible to field in
| this area? I feel like anyone with sufficiently in depth
| knowledge of both the AV1 and HEVC specs has almost
| certainly derived a big paycheck for years from
| stakeholders on one side or the other of these lawsuits.
|
| I'm no expert, but Google having designed AV1, I can
| certainly imagine a world where the codec infringes upon
| HEVC just enough that the lawsuit fees would come out in
| the wash.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are right about the danger of non-neutral experts,
| but there still is an essential difference between a
| group of experts and a jury.
|
| The experts may be biased, but when they open the mouth
| and try to argue their position their bias becomes
| obvious for the other experts and it can be contradicted
| with logical arguments.
|
| Unless all the experts work for an interested party, it
| would be very difficult to impose an incorrect verdict,
| because it is impossible to argue in its favor without
| the mistakes in the argument being immediately exposed by
| an interlocutor.
|
| On the other hand, with a standard jury most people will
| be unable to see what is wrong in the arguments presented
| to them and they will not be able to distinguish truth
| from lies in such technical subjects.
|
| The US elections and the elections in many other
| countries are an eloquent proof of the capacity of
| average people for distinguishing truth from lies
| concerning much simpler facts than the details of video
| compression patents. Expecting a jury to choose the right
| verdict in such a trial seems too optimistic.
| jorvi wrote:
| What I don't understand is why the AV1 pool isn't
| activating their MAD clause.
|
| Part of the idea with AV1 was that with the constituents
| also holding such a massive warchest of patents (plus big
| tech being richer than god), they would countersue and
| demolish anyone that tries to bully AV1 users. Which would
| act like deterrence.
|
| Where is all that might? Was it all just saber rattling,
| and are they basically going to let the AVC / HEVC patent
| holders make a fool out of them?
| adrian_b wrote:
| For now Dolby has just filed a lawsuit.
|
| If this will reach a trial, it remains to be seen whether
| Snap will fight alone or it will receive support.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > For example, Apple only recently (2023) added support [for
| AV1].
|
| Apple has been actively obstructing open video formats for a
| long long time--Apple is the reason there isn't a baseline
| format for <video> in the HTML5 spec, for instance. (Or at
| least there wasn't when the spec was still a well-defined
| document with a version number; I see no merit in keeping
| track of the "living" one.) Incidentally, Apple is a member
| of MPEG-LA and claims to hold numerous patents covering both
| AVC and HEVC.
|
| At this point, whatever harms befall Apple's users due to
| lack of Apple's lack of format support are entirely Apple's
| fault.
| Havoc wrote:
| >hardware decoding support.
|
| As a side note this isn't always superior - recently
| discovered my desktop uses way more power with hardware
| decode than software. Counterintuitive but issue isn't per
| pixel efficiency but that it keeps the GPU in a higher power
| state
| mrweasel wrote:
| That's just trying to promote a competitor. This is more or less
| what Fraunhofer did with the mp3 license, which resulted in bunch
| of new, and better formats.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| This seems particularly desperate, but I'm not surprised this is
| happening, given that patent owners in general have been very
| angry that H.264 didn't wind up being nearly as lucrative as
| MPEG-2 was. Hell, I remember the days when they couldn't even
| agree if H.264 should have a free streaming tier at all or not -
| and it seems like that went away.
|
| Maybe Google should finally make good on their threat to only
| stream YouTube in royalty-free standards.
| falkensmaize wrote:
| I guess to me this doesn't seem like that big of a deal? I mean
| if you have a 100 million subscribers, do you really care much
| about a few $million increase? I thought the big players like
| Youtube had already moved to open source codecs already anyway.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >few $million increase?
|
| Existing licensees are grandfathered in to the old price.
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| I'm confused about this. If I have video on my website that is
| encoded in x264 am I obligated to pay fees?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Not if you are in Europe or in any other place where the H.264
| patents have expired.
|
| The patents are still valid in USA, Brazil and a few other
| places.
| silotis wrote:
| *Claimed to still be valid.
|
| If you're just hosting videos on your website you are
| probably using High Profile which was standardized in March
| of 2005, i.e. more than 20 years ago. That doesn't stop VIA
| and MPEG-LA from claiming they still have relevant patents,
| but that claim is dubious and hasn't been tested in court.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Note that there's some patents that haven't yet expired, at
| least in the US. AFAIK this is because if there's delays in
| patent examination you get extra duration on your patent to
| compensate. Here's a list of the patents that were filed
| before High Profile was standardized and are still valid: h
| ttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M
| ...
|
| Of course MPEG-LA deliberately makes figuring out which
| patents cover which parts of H.264 (which is really a set
| of multiple standards spanning a 10+ year period) ambiguous
| and hard to determine in order to sell more licenses.
| themafia wrote:
| > *Claimed to still be valid.
|
| I can't afford to claim otherwise.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Only if it is used commercially. If it is a free video you do
| not have to pay fees.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| They should be sued. It's incredible discriminatory to make it so
| ridiculously hard for new players to complete.
|
| Hopefully the Licensing Alliance never ever ever gets another
| customer ever again. Hopefully no one uses any of their new
| encodings. This is an untrustworthy company, that always have
| been out to fleece the industry and hold back humanity. Licensing
| Alliance embodies Lawful Evil, is a stain on the patent system as
| a whole. It's hard to find the words for how awful, how enraging
| this cabal is. Ugh. What an evil drain.
|
| We should be able to use computers for audio and video, and it
| shouldnt involve kings ransoms to some jerks who are better at
| paperwork & lawyering.
|
| All that work on av1 and av2 looking more and more civilization
| ally essential as times goes on.
| ronsor wrote:
| My advice (not a lawyer) is to ignore the licensing fees; the
| patents will all be dead by 2027 anyway.
|
| Also I'm not responsible for whatever happens if you do this.
| Noaidi wrote:
| So should I re-encode all my videos to OGG? I'm really confused
| what this means for the average person who has home videos
| encoded in these formats.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Unless you're running a platform with millions of users, where
| you use the codec to encode/decode video for others, you have
| absolutely nothing to worry about due to these news.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Thank you!
| nuxi wrote:
| Note that OGG is not a video codec, it's just a container
| format. I.e. an OGG file can contain MPEG-4/H.264-encoded
| video.
| KronisLV wrote:
| That's an insane amount.
|
| That makes me feel even more strongly about throwing proprietary
| and predatory codecs in the trash and opting to use AV1 et al
| wherever possible, it's better anyways and surely close to a
| decade after coming out, we'd expect devices to support it well
| enough.
| Figs wrote:
| > it's better anyways and surely close to a decade after coming
| out, we'd expect devices to support it well enough.
|
| A lot of people, myself included, are still using quite old
| hardware. The GPU in my daily driver is ~10 years old at this
| point. Between crypto, COVID, and this AI craze raising GPU
| costs by insane amounts, it hasn't made sense to replace it
| with something newer. I _know_ I 'm not alone on that...
| craftkiller wrote:
| For legacy devices, VP8/VP9 is a good option. Intel Added VP8
| hardware decoding to Broadwell which was 12 years ago. Nvidia
| had hardware VP9 decoding 10 years ago on the Geforce 10
| series. AMD had hardware VP9 decode support 9 years ago on
| the Radeon 400 series.
| nine_k wrote:
| Insane in absolute terms, but not per user. Take look at the
| actual fee schedule [1]. The most costly is the license for
| cable TV, which costs 50C/ _per year_ per subscriber. The least
| costly is social media, which goes up to whopping 4.5C/ per MAU
| per user.
|
| I very much understand how the licensing alliance likely was
| bothered by the fact that they are leaving money on the table,
| when TikTok's revenue per user is $50 a year, and a cable
| subscription is easily $800 per year, with the high-end
| reaching $2000. The big players aren't going to notice much.
| For the small players, nothing changed.
|
| [1]:
| https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/3wzYaofEETCfXdQmREx9BK-120...
| adriand wrote:
| Is it insane at all? The biggest fees are charged to the
| biggest providers. With short form video now the dominant
| form of addictive social media content, it doesn't seem
| insane at all that large media companies ought to compensate
| inventors/owners of patented video technology. A company with
| 100 million or more subscribers is not a company I feel a lot
| of empathy for if they're trying to avoid paying licensing
| fees.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| It goes to $2.5m for 5 million users/subscribers and tops
| out at $4.5m for 100 million subscribers. It's not
| staggered evenly at all IMO. So I worry mainly for the
| small players. This shouldn't have any meaningful effect on
| any big player.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| AV1 might not be as patent-free as we had hoped:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/av1s-open-royalty-fr...
| Veliladon wrote:
| The problem is that open codecs can still be encumbered by
| patents and the holders will sue. VP9 and AV1 have their own
| patent pool for that very reason. Google may have open sourced
| its codecs but if they don't indemnify users people who think
| they're safe might be in for a bad time.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Looks like that isn't stopping Dolby.
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/111865-dolby-sues-snap-over-
| vi...
| ronsor wrote:
| I'd love it that the penalty for losing these lawsuits
| would be, that if the patent doesn't apply, you lose the
| patent anyway as punishment for wasting everyone's time and
| money.
|
| Then there would only be infringement lawsuits when someone
| is 100% certain.
| cs702 wrote:
| Profit-seeking at society's expense.
|
| Also known as rent-seeking: "The act of growing one's existing
| wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions
| without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have
| negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced
| economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, stifled
| competition, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue,
| heightened income inequality, heightened debt levels, risk of
| growing corruption and cronyism, decreased public trust in
| institutions, and potential national decline."[a]
|
| Sigh.
|
| ---
|
| [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
| userbinator wrote:
| Trying to milk the last drop before the patents expire? H.264
| patents have already expired in most of the world and the
| remaining ones, which might not even be necessary for the vast
| majority of H.264 use, are also approaching expiry very soon:
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...
| donatj wrote:
| It's interesting because this isn't that exactly the same thing
| Fraunhofer did with the MP3 patent?
| amelius wrote:
| Communication formats should not be patentable. The potential for
| lock in abuse is too high.
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