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An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecs (2018)

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Resurfaced independently across 2 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
6
submitters
6
observed span
2018–2021
peak thread · 165 comments
314 pts
latest 20+ return · 2021-01-09
314 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

Some interesting details on how the H.264 patents are priced, from an article [1] about how much Google pays. Google had threatened to pull H.264 support circa 2011, but ultimately they decided in 2013 to pay a few million bucks/yr to keep it. IIRC, H.264 is one of a few non-Google technologies that is included in Chrome, but is not included in Chromium. > So, how much does those rights cost? Under the terms in place for 2011-2015, the royalty…

I've been using a lot of H.265 (aka x265/HEVC); some pirate scene TV and movie releases come out in it. It's fantastic. About 1/3-1/4 the size of H.264, which makes a huge difference both with download and with archiving. The downside is that there's not a lot of hardware support for encoding or decoding. Doing it on the CPU isn't bad but definitely not as energy efficient. The problem with H.265 is the IP situation is a mess. AV1 looks…

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
590

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
292

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2018-07-11An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecsjanettewc30
2018-07-12Modern codecs like AV1 can bring better quality video to the open weblogix50
2018-07-12An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecsslederer10
2018-07-14An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecsmmcclure50
2018-07-15Modern codecs like AV1 can bring better quality video to the open webFirst breakoutALee262127
2021-01-09An Invisible Tax on the Web: Video Codecs (2018)Best thread · Latest 20+ point returndoener314165