xiphmont

I assume folks who follow video codecs and digital media have already noticed the brand new Alliance for Open Media jointly announced by Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix. I expect the list of member companies to grow somewhat in the near future.

One thing that's come up several times today: People contacting Xiph to see if we're worried this detracts from the IETF's NETVC codec effort. The way the aomedia.org website reads right now, it might sound as if this is competing development. It's not; it's something quite different and complementary.

Open source codec developers need a place to collaborate on and share patent analysis in a forum protected by client-attorney privilege, something the IETF can't provide. AOMedia is to be that forum. I'm sure some development discussion will happen there, probably quite a bit in fact, but pooled IP review is the reason it exists.

It's also probably accurate to view the Alliance for Open Media (the Rebel Alliance?) as part of an industry pushback against the licensing lunacy made obvious by HEVCAdvance. Dan Rayburn at Streaming Media reports a third HEVC licensing pool is about to surface. To-date, we've not yet seen licensing terms on more than half of the known HEVC patents out there.

In any case, HEVC is becoming rather expensive, and yet increasingly uncertain licensing-wise. Licensing uncertainty gives responsible companies the tummy troubles. Some of the largest companies in the world are seriously considering starting over rather than bet on the mess...

Is this, at long last, what a tipping point feels like?

Oh, and one more thing--

As of today, just after Microsoft announced its membership in the Open Media Alliance, they also quietly changed the internal development status of Vorbis, Opus, WebM and VP9 to indicate they intend to ship all of the above in the new Windows Edge browser. Cue spooky X-files theme music.