H.265 / HEVC patent fee is controversial, MPEG LA will waive royalties for H.266 / VVC video format

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen OC_Formula for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, 11 / 11 / PRNewswire-FirstCall-Asianet /-- MPEG LA announced a royalty reduction for the next generation of H.266 / HEVC video coding after much controversy over H.265 / VVC royalties.

MPEG LA is an one-stop licensing package and provider of global technical standards and platforms, with patent pools for QI wireless charging, H.265 / HEVC, etc. MPEG LA has sued Samsung and other companies because of patent disputes. The Mozilla Foundation, the developer of Firefox Firefox, even bluntly said that HEVC is a "patent burden" and will focus on supporting AV1 decoding.

In its latest announcement, MPEG LA announced that it would bring VVC's pool license in line with the reality of the market. First, licensors who are committed to becoming MPEG LA's VVC licenses are exempt from royalties on independent VVC software products sold to end users if they or their affiliates have the right to license or sublicense VVC basic patents now or in the future.

Second, any VVC licensee who signs and complies with MPEG LA's AVC patent portfolio license, HEVC patent portfolio license and VVC patent portfolio license is entitled to a 25 per cent discount on VVC royalties.

MPEG LA says its goal is to provide as many VVC necessary patents as possible to everyone under a single license on the same terms.

CTOnews.com learned that Multifunctional Video coding (Versatile Video Coding, or VVC), also known as H.266, MPEG-I part 3, or Future Video coding (FVC), is a video compression standard finalized by the Joint Video expert Group (JVET) on July 6, 2020. Under the same coding quality, the compression ratio of the new algorithm should be 30-50% better than that of the old algorithm, and other features it should support are:

Lossless and subjective lossless compression

Resolution from 4K to 16K and panoramic video

10 to 16-bit YCbCr 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0, BT.2100 wide color gamut

High dynamic range (HDR) with peak luminance of 1000, 4000 and 10000 nits

Auxiliary channel (for recording depth, transparency, etc.)

Variable frame rate and fractional frame rate from 0 to 120 Hz

Adaptive video coding for differences in time (frame rate), space (resolution), signal-to-noise ratio, color gamut and dynamic range

Stereo / multi-view coding

Panoramic format

Still image coding