It's not quite as hard for Google to switch youtube as you think

Posted Feb 12, 2011 18:51 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: It's not quite as hard for Google to switch youtube as you think by jpnp
Parent article: MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

so encode the H.264 video at a nice low resolution suitable for mobile devices (say 320x200) and use vp8 for higher res versions

let H.264 gain a reputation from the people who don't know any better as being the bad looking version when viewed on a good screen :-)

It's not quite as hard for Google to switch youtube as you think

Posted Feb 13, 2011 23:40 UTC (Sun) by PaulWay (guest, #45600) [Link] (1 responses)

I suspect we can do better than that:

I show my brother a video on my Android and he looks it up on his iPhone. My VP8 video looks better and is lower bandwidth than his h.264 video. Case closed.

In other words, mobile _is_ the market VP8 should be aiming for.

I think the MPEG-LA wants to keep us thinking that h.264 is what 'everyone' uses, that 'everyone' wants it, and 'everything' is in h.264 - with the implication that video on the web has to be in h.264 or people will go elsewhere. The reality is that the users don't really care - if VP8 gets implemented then the users just go with that. MPEG-LA's only success is to get browsers to use h.264, and that will fade as soon as VP8 gets implemented everywhere because it's cheaper to license (as in free).

(I also think most platform vendors know that h.264 is a devil's bargain, and would gladly implement anything else - as soon as its licensing was clear and proven. This is why MPEG-LA is stirring the pot - they want as much FUD about licensing anything else as possible because then licensing h.264 doesn't look as bad. If you're given the alternative of eating a toad, eating a worm doesn't sound so bad...)

Have fun,

Paul

It's not quite as hard for Google to switch youtube as you think

Posted Feb 14, 2011 22:26 UTC (Mon) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

IMO that's what this is, had they truly been forming a patent pool for lawsuit purposes it wouldn't be a public announcement. They will absolutely never ever sue Google or anyone else with the ability to afford lawyers. For if they do, and VP8 is found to not infringe the patents in the pool then Google has the best marketing available for why to use VP8.

No, they won't sue. They will spread lots and lots of FUD about this dangerous patent pool, and they may go after a few easy targets but they absolutely will never ever sue Google or anyone with deep enough pockets to support a patent lawsuit. They simply can't risk the revenues, at least not until it's apparent that VP8 has fully sidelined H.264 and their licensing revenue falls off a cliff.