https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-en...

And YouTube doesn't do 4K encoding in H.264 anymore. If you want 4K video from YouTube you need VP9 support (or AV1 when YouTube starts AV1 encodes):

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-p...

Large content providers like YouTube or Netflix really don't care about the patent and have the resources for storage and encoding multiple formats. Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats.

They still have to support patented formats and now they have to spend money on encoding and storage on yet another codec if the want to use VP9. What's the benefit of supporting two formats? One that is supported everywhere and one that isn't it?

And that's what's happening. VP9 is royalty-free and AV1 will be royalty-free.

> Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats.

So it's good that both YouTube and Netflix support VP9 and AV1. It helps make royalty-free video formats commonplace on the web.

> What's the benefit of supporting two formats?

It's worth it for the bandwidth saving. VP9 significantly outperforms H.264.

Who are these content providers that are "abandoning" H.264?

so it's good that both Netflix and YouTube support VP9 and Av1

Good for who? End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free format. They just care about the content being available on their platform.

This is a tired argument. The same argument was attempted when VP8 was new, and when VP9 was new, and now again with AV1. I'm sure the same, worn-out ground will be revisited when AV2 comes along.

End users don't care that TCP\IP is royalty-free or that HTTP and HTML are royalty-free or that any of the other commonly used formats and protocols are royalty-free. They don't care because they don't understand the issues.

Developers care. Builders care. I care. I want to implement video on the internet for any use case without having to consult a lawyer just to understand the licensing implications of doing so. VP9 and AV1 make that possible. VP9 and AV1 normalize video on the internet by making it royalty-free like all the other internet formats and protocols.

Content companies and hardware companies and software companies don't join AOMedia for the fun of it. They join because it's the practical choice:

http://aomedia.org/about-us/

Profit is in the users, not in the developers

The choice isn't AV1 or users. It's AV1 and users.

And I can't find how much licensing actual costs for H.264.

What does that have to do with patents and why people should care?

This is bad for users, whether they realize it or not. They end up with fewer (and potentially worse) options.

It doesn't really have an affect on small content producers. I do live streams for a non profit. We pay one time for Wirecast and the Black Magic hardware. Pay a neglible cost to send the livestream to our provider and they broadcast it. iOS users at least can view from the browser using HLS. We also send another stream to Facebook. How does H.264 patents affect us?

You don't have to "consult a lawyer", unless you are creating your own codec. You pay the licensing fee which in the grand scheme of things is lower than all of your other costs - hosting, development tools, internet costs, etc. and you're done.

[1] Which I wouldn't be so sure. Many H.264-using devices come with disclaimer, that they are not licensed for professional use and that you may need your own license. As usual, consult your lawyer. The point of VP9/AV1 is, that this is not necessary.

End users do care about the cost of their devices. Patent-free formats lower that cost. And patent encumbrances just make it more difficult and costly for manufacturers to include support; sometimes some formats get left out due to cost.

I certainly agree that end users don't care about patents, but they care about some of the practical problems that patent-encumbered formats cause down the line. These are usually not showstoppers, but they help cause customer confusion and sticker shock.

Having to support both formats in the short- or medium-term is definitely annoying and costly for manufacturers, but if we do actually win the open format war (I think the OP is a little overly optimistic there), that problem goes away.

You get a much wider and more loyal user base if you're smart enough not to enforce such silliness anymore.

I was working on networked audio/video devices back in ~2005 when that space was pretty new. We had a line-item BOM cost for encoder/decoder licenses that was not chump-change, which got passed on to customers.

I can only imagine costs have gotten much worse since then. When you take into account all the electronics your average connected person owns: phone, tablet, TV, AppleTV/GoogleTV/Roku, computer OS, etc., it really starts to add up.

Even if the parent poster is overstating and it's on the order of $50 per person, that's a ton of wasted money when you consider the total cost.

Consider all the electronics you've owned over the past 20-25 years. You undoubtedly paid a dollar or two for less complex ones and much more for more complex devices.

Eventually they will, the only missing piece for AV1 to become the de facto successor to h264 was Apple, with them onboard AV1 will cover all of web and mobile. I mean look at the companies behind AV1:

Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, AMD, ARM, IBM, NVidia, Broadcom, and that's about HALF the list.

You might try reading the article next time. Apple recently joined the Alliance for Open Media. That indicates to me that they are likely to support AV1. Apple was really the last holdout and it would be poor business for them not to play.

My contention wasn't that Apple wouldn't support VP9, it was that if Apple didn't support VP9, it's not likely that content developers would leave iOS users out in the cold.

Pushing open formats now means we develop a habit of only allowing open formats into industrial standards, which means in the medium and long term we all win with lower costs.

This because they had a bunch of devices out there that could do H264 in hardware, but had to do webm in software, and thus playing the latter format would take a greater toll on the battery.

And even if every damn device use a programmable DSP these days, the problem is not solved. Because only the OEM can be expected to provide the firmware needed for new formats.

Effectively the only way to win this would be for GPLv3 or similar to be made law, so that consumer devices are not beholden to OEMs for maintenance.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-online-video-compression-av1...