V-Nova launched their PERSEUS codec on April 1, 2015, an inauspicious day, particularly for a codec vendor making claims like, “offering UHD quality at HD bitrates, HD at SD bitrates, and SD video at audio bitrates.” That day, I was on a thread that proposed alternative headlines; my favorite, which was not penned by me, was, “Startup does something proprietary that …

Imagine you’re walking through Heathrow Airport terminal, shopping for tchotchkes to bring home to spouse and children. You spot a handsome Cambridge sweatshirt, give it a quick rub and squeeze, and it feels great. What do you check next? For me, it’s price, because if it’s £30, it’s coming home, but if it’s £60, I’m buying a “Mind the Gap” …

I gave a recent talk on royalties at the Streaming Forum, entitled HEVC, H.264 and MPEG-DASH Royalty Update. Here’s the description. Ten years ago, to stream video, you needed to know how to encode to H.264 and configure Flash. Now you have to be a patent lawyer. The end of 2016 was brutal from a royalty perspective. MPEG LA did …