> Presumably now Netflix will have to pay Broadcom some amount to stream over HEVC.

Presumably, Netflix will in the short-term pay X amount for this but work probably started yesterday or earlier to replace it with something that doesn't have fees to use.

They've been working with Intel on AV1 hardware since 2019.

[1] https://research.netflix.com/publication/AV1%20at%20Netflix

Unfortunately AV1 hardware acceleration support was really slow. Apple only just adopted it in their new SoCs. Qualcomm didn't support it until recently either. It's probably still years till the hardware support is anywhere close to H.265, or even H.264 (the currently most common format). It's possible to decode AV1 in software, but the computation requirements are quite high.

HEVC is from the VP9 generation of codecs. Qualcomm has supported VP9 decoding since 2016 (Snapdragon 820). Unfortunately, no Apple device has ever supported hardware accelerated VP9 decode, so HEVC is the only UHD option on those devices.

I guess it doesn't really matter anyway since AV1 is also patent encumbered...

> probably started yesterday or earlier to replace it with something that doesn't have fees to use.

For netflix? its not that simple. Video codec design is a mammoth task. Sure you can make your own fairly easily, but making an efficient, hardware accelerated encoder that is suitable for broadcast work is one thing.

Making a spec for consumer hardware to implement, efficiently and cheaply is another.

go and read the spec for MPEG2, then compare it to MPEG 4, with all the amendments to make h.264. Its a lot of work.

Probably is a good thing that they've already been on the case [for 5+ years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1) then.

I do realize this, I didn't mean literally yesterday as in "the day before today", but more "earlier in time".

Broadcom aren't on the list of HEVC licensors, so they haven't patented HEVC itself, but some related process of handling HEVC video...

Which begs the question, if it's an essential patent, why is it not part of the pool from MPEG-LA?

> why is it not part of the pool from MPEG-LA?

Maybe Broadcom didn't feel like joining the extortionist pool but preferred to extort the format into uselessness all on its own?

There are precious few ways to mandate licensing of a patent of a third party, and MPEG-LA (now Via LA) license pools aren't one of those ways.

There's no guaranteed way to find all essential patents, so when MPEG-LA made the standard they just missed (at least) one. MPEG-LA isn't a government, they can't require anyone to license patents to them for their standards.

Netflix is known to experiment and use different codecs. They can switch it in Munich in theory