HEVC Advance cuts content distribution royalty fees

Patent licensing administrator HEVC Advance is again lowering its royalty rates in hopes of driving accelerated adoption of the HEVC/H.265 video compression standard.

This time, the patent pool is eliminating "subscription" and "title-by-title" content distribution from the HEVC Advance Patent License. HEVC Advance will no longer license nor seek royalty fees for non-physical HEVC content distribution including internet streaming, cable, over-the-air broadcast and satellite.

"HEVC Advance has worked hard since its inception to facilitate HEVC adoption and enable consumers to enjoy the best video experience. By eliminating non-physical HEVC content distribution from our license, we are transforming to meet the needs of distributors looking to adopt HEVC and bring the incredible bandwidth savings and clarity of 4K UHD to consumers," HEVC Advance CEO Pete Moller said in a statement.

RELATED: HEVC Advance seeks to speed up codec adoption by waiving select software royalties

This is not the first time HEVC Advance has reduced its royalty rates. In October 2017, the group introduced a discounted royalty rate category for lower-priced set-top boxes, surveillance cameras and certain other devices. That rate applied to devices covered under the Connected Home and Other Devices Category that are sold at or under $40 per unit.

Today, HEVC Advance expanded on that previous discount to include sales up to $80 per unit. At the same time, it reduced its combined $45 million device and content distribution enterprise caps to a single enterprise cap of $40 million, and expanded its Trademark Program discounts to include physical media. Physical content distribution, like Blu-ray discs and other types of physical media as well as devices will continue to be licensed.

In 2016, HEVC Advance elected to waive fees on select classes of software applications involved encoding and decoding.

“While HEVC technology implemented in specialized hardware circuitry provides the best and most efficient user experience, there are millions of existing mobile devices and personal computers that do not have HEVC hardware capability. Our initiative is tailored to enable software app and browser providers to include HEVC capability in their software products so that everyone can enjoy HEVC/UHD video today,” Moller said.