Re:The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won
by kelnos on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @04:14PM
(#16119135)
I don't think that's out of line.
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.
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.