Japanese Broadcasters Adopt AVC/H.264

Six leading Japanese broadcasters agreed to adopt AVC/H.264 as the video coding technology for digital terrestrial broadcasting to mobile devices. The announcement represents a breakthrough on royalties and other terms of license between broadcasters and MPEG LA, the group that represents multiple patent holders for the IEEE 1394 Standard, the DVB-T Standard, the MPEG-4 Visual Standard and the MPEG-4 Systems Standard.



Under the accord, broadcasters will have the option of paying a one-time fee of US$2,500 for each encoder used in transmitting the AVC/H.264 video. The one-time fees will be offered as an alternative to annual fees. They will cover the use of AVC/H.264 video for free cable and free satellite as well as free terrestrial broadcast television.



Broadcasters covered in this deal include NHK, TBS, NTV, TV Asahi, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo. The companies expect to initiate mobile broadcast services in the first quarter of the year 2006. http://www.mpegla.com