Flash’s departure clears way for format stand-off

“Here’s the problem: while Microsoft and Apple’s browsers will
be supporting the tag to view content, they are only supporting the
H.264 video codec by default. H.264 is a proprietary format with
patents controlled by a consortium of companies known as the MPEG
Licensing Authority (MPEG LA). To get H.264 support in your
software (whether a browser or video editing tool), you have to pay
MPEG LA a licensing fee.

“As Ed Bott from ZDNet reported this spring, this is not
currently an exorbitant fee (in fact the most royalty a licensee
would have to pay would be $6.5 million/year through 2015). Even
better, the MPEG LA has said it won’t collect royalties for video
players (including browsers) until the beginning of 2016, so only
software that encodes, decodes, or streams video is affected by
these royalty fees.”

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