MPEG LA Says H.264 Will Be Royalty Free For Life, For Content That Is Free

With all the talk of Apple devices, the Flash platform and the H.264 codec, there has been a lot of speculation in the industry on what MPEG LA planned to do when their current H.264 licensing terms expired in 2015. Today, MPEG LA put part of that speculation to rest as they have announced that they will not charge royalties for Internet video that is free to end users. That's certainly good news for many content owners but does not address the market for what the royalties will be a few years from now for subscription based content services and device manufactures who will still have to pay. The news also does nothing to address what I consider to be a bigger issues which is the need for browsers to give us a single codec we can call use. Companies like Mozilla and Opera are still going to have to pay for a license if they want to support H.264 which means we are not any closer to have much in the way of video standard on the Internet.

For more on the story, check out StreamingMedia.com's coverage.