Free-to-view H.264 Internet Video to be royalty-free through 2015

According to their press release this week, the MPEG LA announced that it “will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users … during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015.” Stephen Shankland of CNET has been providing excellent coverage of this topic with links to stories about how this relates to HTML5 video support, Google’s intention to buy On2, and Mozilla’s support for the competing Ogg Theora video codec.

VBrick supports the H.264 standard and is happy to see more clarity from the MPEG LA regarding its licensing terms. With Apple and Google’s native support of H264 video as part of their HTML5 implementation in the Safari and Chrome browsers as well as their native H264 support on both the iPhone/iPad and Android mobile devices, the adoption of H264 for Internet video will accelerate. Microsoft has indicated general support for native video rendering in the browser via the HTML5 standard while not yet revealing how it will be implemented. I suspect that Microsoft, which already is both a MPEG LA licensor and licensee of H.264, will support it with the HTML5 video tag in the next release of Internet Explorer. Microsoft has already provided support of H.264 and HTML5 for the delivery of video to the iPhone from their IIS web server and has some support for H.264 in Windows 7.

H.264 provides a singular, standard, and widely adopted way to reach all “three screens” (TV, PC, and mobile) with one source of streaming video. This dramatically reduces the cost and complexity for publishers and consumers alike. VBrick will continue to support this standard with innovative products and services.