[Spice-devel] Thoughts about improving streaming video

[John A. Sullivan III]

On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 00:14 +0200, David Jaša wrote:
> Dne 27.6.2011 20:45, John A. Sullivan III napsal(a):
> > On Mon, 2011-06-27 at 08:32 +0300, Yaniv Kaul wrote:
> >> Licensing and patent concerns of x264 aside (see
> >> http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/x264-devel/2010-July/007508.html),
> >> the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me to have H.264
> >> offload feature in QXL:
> >
> > This sounds great (gaming on SPICE!) but that's a pretty big aside.  How
> > would we handle the patent issues? - John
> >
> 
> Gaming needs 3D acceleration, video needs video acceleration. That's two 
> distinct features despite being implemented by the same transistors. :)
> 
> Patent issues can be solved pretty easily in an ugly way - make it 
> possible to pass any video stream to client if the client claims it 
> supports the container + codec, but do not include any patented stuff in 
> client by default. Users could observe the U.S. patent law and buy 
> codecs from e.g. Fluendo, who will pay the royalties for them, or if 
> they don't mind crossing it, they can add support of patented codecs 
> themselves.
> 
<snip>
<grin> I was making a reference to the X264 dev in they hyperlink who
exclaimed, "ideoconferencing?  Pah!  I’m playing Call of Duty 4 over a
live video stream!".  Interesting idea though!

However, more seriously, that is ugly.  Is it really something we would
expect our users to do? Would it completely torpedo most commercial
installation in the contract legal review stage?

From reading the referenced hyperlink about x264
(http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249) it sounds like an excellent
solution but only if we can practically surmount the patent issues.
Thoughts?