Apple joins the OMA

[LienusLateTips]

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16850402/apple-joins-open-media-alliance-streaming-online-video-compression-codec

Apple today has agreed to join the tech consortium "Open Media Alliance", that is working on a new free codec, known as "AV1", to replace VP9, and most importantly H.264 and H.265. 

Quote

The goal of the Open Media Alliance was to unify the industry around a new, more cohesive standard. It was also to avoid an increasingly messy royalty fee arrangement with industry group HEVC, which includes patent holders for the successor to the dominant H.264 standard, some of whom are fighting to extract money from any web player or hardware manufacturer looking to make use of the codec. Apple, until even this year, was pushing for the successor, known as H.265, to succeed. But the company has since signed on with the Open Media Alliance in what could be a significant show of support for AV1 that could help it become the open web standard.

People wanting to use H.264/H.265 need to pay a royalty to HEVC. This new standard is royalty free.

 

This is a great thing for people wanting to make new video-based websites, and apps.

[DrMacintosh]

Reeeeeee -Google

[ARikozuM]

I thought OMA meant "One Man Army", but that doesn't make sense since it's only a one man army. 

[dizmo]

I'm honestly shocked. I didn't think they'd make that kind of move, but good on them.

[captain_to_fire]

Who says that Apple doesn’t follow open standards? ?

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

I'm honestly shocked. I didn't think they'd make that kind of move, but good on them.

Nobody wants to pay royalties, i.e. HDMI which is worse than Displayport. 

[Dabombinable]

VP9 really needs to piss off. When it got introduced my laptop with its Pentium 4 HT 3.2GHz was no longer good enough for Youtube (its an emergency emergency emergency emergency computer). As long as the standard is as easy to decode as H264 I'll be happy.

8 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Nobody wants to pay royalties, i.e. HDMI which is worse than Displayport. 

Its cheaper for the end user though...

[dizmo]

7 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Nobody wants to pay royalties, i.e. HDMI which is worse than Displayport. 

True. I always see proprietary and open source fundamentals as being enemies (Lightning cable, for example).

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

VP9 really needs to piss off. When it got introduced my laptop with its Pentium 4 HT 3.2GHz was no longer good enough for Youtube (its an emergency emergency emergency emergency computer). As long as the standard is as easy to decode as H264 I'll be happy.

If encode efficiency is about on par or better than HEVC, probably not. 

 

Lack of hardware decode makes introductions of new formats a PITA.

[Dabombinable]

Just now, Zodiark1593 said:

If encode efficiency is about on par or better than HEVC, probably not. 

 

Lack of hardware decode makes introductions of new formats a PITA.

I'm glad I've got a GTX 970 for that reason-Vega doesn't even have partial VP9 decoding if I remember correctly (or at least Frontier through 64 don't).

[Zodiark1593]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

I'm glad I've got a GTX 970 for that reason-Vega doesn't even have partial VP9 decoding if I remember correctly (or at least Frontier through 64 don't).

My GTX 960 has pretty much everything but HDR covered (including 10 bit HEVC), though lack of that PlayReady DRM makes it largely a moot point for anything but locally encoded/pirated media.

[captain_to_fire]

34 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Nobody wants to pay royalties, i.e. HDMI which is worse than Displayport. 

And yet only a few PC OEMs bothered to add mini DP to their laptops around 2009 and beyond 

[Qwertious]

I was scared Apple users will be missing out on new codecs like VP10. No 4k YouTube on safari ?

[AlTech]

3 hours ago, dizmo said:

I'm honestly shocked. I didn't think they'd make that kind of move, but good on them.

Apple are STILL the only browser developer that doesn't support WebM.

 

So they need to fix that. WebM btw is also an open thing which competes against MP4.

[Commodus]

I suspect the main reason Apple is embracing this but hasn't touched VP9 is simple: VP9 is effectively Google's standard.  It's technically open source, but the truth is that Google ultimately dictates where it goes.

 

And Apple has long held the same policy on formats: if it doesn't create the format, it wants a true standard that no one company owns and will actually get used beyond a handful of places.  I still remember people grousing that Apple wrote its own copy protection format (FairPlay) instead of going with Microsoft's PlaysForSure, as if Apple wanted to trust the fate of a crucial service to a major rival!

[tsk]

Great, AV1 all the things.

[Matu20]

Remind me in 10 years.

[Doobeedoo]

This will be interesting.

I was just wondering lately when will Twitch support H.265 though. 

Using open standard is great and 'one codec to rule them all' is neat. So AV1 is looking really good. 

[LienusLateTips]

WE ARE ON THE WAN SHOW!