Author: Rob Glidden
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Google Blinks, Supports Standardizing WebM
Last night Google appears to have ended its silence about its willingness to standardize VP8 and WebM. Cnet has updated a news article, “Mozilla trying to build VP8 into HTML5 video“, with Google’s response: “We’re excited by the community’s response to the WebM project, and we support efforts to standardize the technology,” Google said in…
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Google’s VP8 Patent Problem (It’s Even Bigger Than You Think)
Last week I encouraged Google to rethink their VP8 open sourcing patent strategy and “do the right open standards thing — join and contribute to responsible standards groups that are working to solve the royalty-free open standards need.” The blog was picked up in Simon Phipps’ ComputerWorld blog, ZDNet, The Register, LWN and elsewhere. At…
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How Google’s Open Sourcing of VP8 Harms the Open Web
Much of the initial commentary on Google’s open sourcing of the VP8 codec it acquired in purchasing On2 has breathlessly, and uncritically, centered on the purported game-changing impact of the move. But unfortunately, these commentaries miss an essential point that Google has studiously avoided mentioning the need to standardize royalty free codecs (not just release…
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MPEG Issues Resolution on Type-1 (Royalty-Free) Standardization
MPEG — Working Group 11 of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 — has issued a resolution seeking active participation in developing a Type-1 (royalty-free) video coding standard. “Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National…
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Four Ways to Tell if the FCC’s Open Set Top Interface is On Track
It is gratifying to see the FCC Broadband Plan include an open set top recommendation (4.12), firmly grounded in the FCC’s continuing responsibility to implement section 629 of the 1996 Telco Act to “assure the commercial availability” of TV devices from retail and unaffiliated sources. And welcome words in the frank acknowledgment that over 14…
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Gateway To Nowhere: Standards-Bashing Won’t Fix Set Top Gridlock
Standards “would thwart, not advance, innovation” and “entail crippling delays” because they are “extremely time consuming, often divisive, and sometimes used by one faction to block the progress of another or to promote its own intellectual property portfolio”. It would be easy to dismiss comments like these in the Cable industry’s latest response to the…
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DTG Group Challenges Semi-Open Stance of Project Canvas
Last August I questioned if the BBC-led hybrid DTV Project Canvas was “seduced by the cynical allure of a semi-open ‘standards-based open environment‘” . Many kudos to the DTG — the lead UK DTV standards group — who today released its tough-love “parallel process” criticism in the BBC Trust oversight consultation. To wit: “it is…
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FCC Video Device Innovation Notice: We Need an Open Video Internet!
The FCC Video Device Innovation Notice [1] asks one of the most fundamentally central questions to the prospect of not only a viable Broadband Plan for America, but also to the very future of the Open Internet that has revolutionized communications systems of all humanity: “How could the Commission develop a standard that would achieve…
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Royalty free codec standards — don’t settle for less
After a lively debate, the IETF appears to be moving forward with a royalty-free audio codec standardization activity. Here’s to its successful launch and positive outcome. I’ve put a brief summary at the mpegrf.com site, and there is a good summary here. The group’s email discussion alias is here — and my view, expressed there…
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A Royalty-Free MPEG: It’s Time for ISO and ITU to Deliver
In late 2001, to much industry enthusiasm, H.264 and MPEG-4 AVC were launched as the world’s unifying codec family in a joint project between ITU and ISO/MPEG with the undertaking that the “JVT [Joint Video Team] will define a “baseline” profile. That profile should be royalty-free for all implementations.” The failure to deliver on this…