AfterDawn: News

H.264 royalty-free period extended

MPEG LA, the company behind the H.264 video-encoding codec, has decided to extended the royalty-free period of the tech until December 31st, 2015, allowing sites to stream using the technology for free.

The current licensing period was set to finish at the end of 2010.



The extension may be a way to "encourage" sites to use H.264 instead of free rival Ogg Theora, which was recently selected by Wikipedia for video playback. H.264 is currently used by the king of web video, however, YouTube.

Lesser rival On2 creates a codec called VP8, and Google recently announced their acquisition of On2, sparking speculation that VP8 would be the new codec of choice for YouTube.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 4 Feb 2010 17:24

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• 5 comments

• tatsh

  Support Theora!

  5.2.2010 02:18 #1

• beanos66

  IT'S A TRAP!, RUN AWAY!!

  5.2.2010 04:01 #2

• scum101

  x264 is free and always will be .. proprietary codecs are bad mmmkay?
  

  Yes, we give you 100% free, no strings attached email! Just send us your address and we will send you as much free email as you could ever wish for

  5.2.2010 04:02 #3

• TBandit

  Originally posted by tatsh: Support Theora!
  I didn't even know about this but I think as long as H.264 is free well be good. That does sound like a good alternatvie though.

  6.2.2010 03:44 #4

• scum101

  H264.. microsoft patented proprietary codec IS the alternative.. everybody should use open source and open standards codecs for ALL media.. because they will always be free and the content will ALWAYS be accessible.. unlike older M$ text formats for instance...
  

  Yes, we give you 100% free, no strings attached email! Just send us your address and we will send you as much free email as you could ever wish for

  6.2.2010 08:51 #5