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Comment by citruspi | Hacker News Reader

> As usual, Apple pushes NIH, instead of supporting DASH which is the common standard.

I mean... HLS predates DASH. It would've been hard for them to support a common standard which didn't even exist at the time. Initial release of HLS was in 2009[0], work started on DASH in 2010[1].

I'd also disagree with the characterization of DASH as "the commmon standard" - it's certainly a legitimate standard, but I feel like support for HLS is more ubiquitous than support for DASH (please correct me if I'm wrong).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...

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Predating doesn't stop them from supporting something else once it becomes common. They don't do it since they want to impose HLS on others. And their refusal to support MSE[1] on iOS stinks even more clearly as an anti-competitive method to do it.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions

Why didn’t MPEG just adopt HLS?

I think you have the NIH cause-effect the wrong way around.

Apple isn't exactly the champion of free standards. Is HLS free for others to adopt? DASH is. The same messed up story happened with touch events for JavaScript. What Apple were pushing wasn't free.

> Is HLS free for others to adopt?

Yes, and v7 of the protocol is documented here: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8216

I don't see it saying there it's free for everyone to use. It also says:

> This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

IETF standard should be free as far as I know. So the fact that it's not is already suspicious.

Knowing Apple, they probably patented it to the brink. So they released it royalty free? And when exactly?

> I don't see it saying there it's free for everyone to use.

Note the word 'and'. That link wasn't to explain that it's free.

Also "is not an IETF standard" is a pretty low bar for suspicion!

Well, exactly the point. So this link doesn't say anything about whether it's free.

> DASH is free to adopt

Citation needed :)

From https://www.mpegla.com/programs/dash/

> The royalty for DASH Clients, which is now payable from January 1, 2017 forward, remains US $0.05 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year.

That's MPEG-LA patent trolls, nothing to do with MPEG in MPEG-DASH for the reference. They can claim they own the Moon the same way. They do it with anything that looks usable and related to video. Patent trolls aren't really the measure of how free the standard is.

Apple however are the owners of HLS, and unlike some random patent trolls, if they are insisting on its adoption, they have to make sure their patents on it are royalty free. Not that it will protect anyone from further patent tolls attacks from the likes of MPEG-LA, but that's a requirement.

Apple has never been shy about communicating which technologies of theirs they have patented. While it would be nice to have an explicit statement from Apple, the absence of it speaks volumes.

Has MPEG made any statement about the MPEG-LA patent pool?

> While it would be nice to have an explicit statement from Apple, the absence of it speaks volumes.

I'm not sure what that means. Either they released it royalty free or not. Since there is no public statement about it, there is no reason to assume it's free.

> Has MPEG made any statement about the MPEG-LA patent pool?

I don't think anyone cares to make statements about patent trolls. The only effective way to deal with them is to bust their claims in court, which not many want to do.

And that sounds like reason enough for Apple to ignore the DASH spec. Case closed IMHO.

Apple should be out of video business, if they are scared of patent trolls.

But the problem is the reverse here. Apple have patents on HLS itself which are not free, so it's not suitable for general adoption.

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