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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

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shmerl·

> but with the recent Apple announcements it's looking like a chance to usurp h.265 is basically gone.

What announcement?

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I assume they're talking about HEVC support in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/macos-high-sierra-del...

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/503/

That was expected, since Apple are part of MPEGLA cartel and they strongly oppose free codecs. But it doesn't really mean anything, since everyone else would have to pay arm and leg to use it, so the pressure to adopt free codec is still here. I hope AV1 will come out soon enough. Daala itself isn't really ready as is.

Apple held off on adoption of HEVC and they certainly don't make as much money as they pay. As much as I hate Apple's love for proprietary technology, had AV1 been released on schedule Apple might have adopted it.

I'm not convinced. Otherwise they would have joined Alliance for Open Media. Their absence speaks for itself and shows where their allegiance lies.

More to the point, VP9 is available today and is a perfectly good substitute for HEVC, with the benefit that you don't have to pay for a license from three different patent pools and an as-yet unknown (but certainly non-zero) number of third parties on undisclosed terms in order to use it.

Apple probably held off adoption so that HEVC patent license situation improves a bit (at least most companies with patents join in some pool or start to offer licenses).

If AV1 would be released sooner it wouldn't be even as good as HEVC, which would be bad. VP9 is already that free-but-not-as-good-as-HEVC codec. Also they would need to release AV2 in 1 or 2 years (as the better-than-HEVC codec), which is just too soon after AV1 and would put a big question on why AV1 was released at all...

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