Re: [rtcweb] Alternative decision process in RTCWeb

[Maik Merten <[e-mail]>]

Am 04.12.2013 02:25, schrieb David Singer:
> Nonetheless, I still think H.263 deserves a more careful look.  I know Stephan is negative, but so far, he’s the only one.  For those who DON’T currently implement H.263, could/would you?

Quite clearly H.263 is not yet in the "so old it's as safe as it can 
get" realm, and the MPEG-4 visual patent pool lists numerous patents 
tagged as "H.263".

Of course, this does not necessarily mean that these patents read on the 
proposed H.263 baseline, but this is certainly difficult to assess 
without legal consultation. An interesting, if not conclusive, data 
point would be if those who deploy H.263 have a licensing agreement of 
any sorts in place.

Then again I wonder if the IPR-situation of H.263 (or MPEG-1 Part 2, or 
Theora, ...) can be simplified by mandating support only for 
Intra-frames (a decoder would be allowed, but not required, to skip 
decoding other frame types). This would mostly boil down to "mimick 
MJPEG", but with a clear upgrade path to "real video codec" for those 
who feel that the IPR situation for additional bitstream features is 
under control (by age of the codec, by IPR research, by licensing, ...).


Best regards,

Maik