As predicted, the fragmented nature of the HEVC patent pool (HEVC Advance Accepts Patents) has already begun to spawn new market entrants. Meet Thor.
Marvel’s lightning-slinging superhero is nowhere to be seen. Thor is Cisco’s new project (and, eventually, a codec), which was released to a small group in late July. The company said that it felt pushed to work on the project after it saw the messy situation developing around H.265/HEVC. Two separate patent pools have been established for HEVC: MPEG-LA and HEVC Advance. The total cost to license the codec from these bodies can be up to 16 times more expensive than H.264, says Cisco.
In addition to the cost, the terms of licensing HEVC mean that the codec cannot be used in any open-source or freely-distributed software application, such as web browsers. ‘Freemium’ products, such as WebEx, are also excluded. Because of this, HEVC is not a universal fit across hardware and software products.
“The industry needs a high quality, next-generation codec that can be used everywhere”, wrote Cisco CTO Jon Rosenberg. Hence, Thor. Development is being undertaken by codec experts such as Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth. Cisco also hired patent lawyers and consultants. A new codec development process was developed, which meant that the community could work through the long list of patents, and evolve Thor to work around or avoid them.
While Thor is not complete, it is already open to viewing. The source code can be found at http://tinyurl.com/nzmwxku. Cisco also sent Thor as an input to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which has begun a standards activity to develop a next-generation, royalty-free video codec in its NetVC workgroup.
Cisco is inviting others to join in on Thor’s development: emails can be sent to [email protected]. While the response has so far been largely positive, Rosenberg has said that any kind of final codec is “probably” years away.
Analyst Comment
When asked what makes Google’s VP9 ‘proprietary’ compared to Thor, Rosenberg said that “The difference is whether the codec is developed under the purview of a standards development organization (SDO), in which participants have an opportunity to be involved in the development process” – the SDO, in this case, being the NetVC workgroup. (TA)
