Cisco Thor Set to Shake Up Internet Video
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Infoworld reports on Cisco attempting to develop a patent and royalty free video codec for use on the web. Since the inception of HTML5, the Internet has been seeking a free to use video codec to use as a standard for video online. But all existing codecs are encumbered in ways that makes their wide, general adoption either impossible, costly or potentially difficult between browser makers. Cisco has taken it upon themselves to do something about this and project Thor might be the answer to the Internet's video problems.
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W T F ?
@linked article said:
Currently, Cisco is paying $6.5 million per year for use of H.264, Rosenberg tells InfoWorld, so the huge leap in H.265 royalties and its lack of an annual cap, is very worrisome. And Cisco won't use Google's open source, royalty-free VP8 codec because it was developed solely by Google, he says, making it a risky technology on which to build products.
Please tell me how starting from scratch, this late in the game, is better than taking up an existing OPEN SOURCE solution.
I do not know anything about what license Google released VP8 under, but if it was truly released royalty free, then how is there a risk in making it better?
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@JaredBusch said:
W T F ?
@linked article said:
Currently, Cisco is paying $6.5 million per year for use of H.264, Rosenberg tells InfoWorld, so the huge leap in H.265 royalties and its lack of an annual cap, is very worrisome. And Cisco won't use Google's open source, royalty-free VP8 codec because it was developed solely by Google, he says, making it a risky technology on which to build products.
Please tell me how starting from scratch, this late in the game, is better than taking up an existing OPEN SOURCE solution.
I do not know anything about what license Google released VP8 under, but if it was truly released royalty free, then how is there a risk in making it better?
It sounds like they are trying to play off of the "Google fear" you see so often on the internet, where Google is taking all of your info and selling it to the highest bidder. I'm not arguing as to whether it is valid or not just that it seems to be what Cisco is going for.
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There may be patents or licensing restrictions with the Google codecs.
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