Cisco is in the process of releasing ‘Thor’, not a new ‘super-hero’ or even a new satellite from Telenor, but what will eventually be a new codec.

‘Thor’ is intended to be a complete replacement for the cluster of complex patents covering the improved compression offered by HEVC and MPEG-LA and HEVC-Advance solutions, which Cisco says can end up costing users up to 16 times more than H.264.

The news emerged in Large Display Monitor (LDM) which in a piece by news editor Tom Allen states that the usual terms of licensing the various patents also severely limits how they are used. LDM quotes Cisco’s CTO Jon Rosenberg saying: “The industry needs a high quality, next generation codec that can be used everywhere.”

Cisco is inviting codec developers and users to comment on its work and has also submitted the source code to the Internet Engineering Task Force which is also working towards a next-gen royalty free video codec as part of the NetVC working party.

However, Rosenberg is also somewhat hedging his bets by admitted that any sort of final codec is “probably” years away, quotes LDM.  Cisco’s outline project was released in late-July to a small group of specialist developers.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Virgin Galactic in stock split
2. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
3. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
4. Optimism under threat at SES
5. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
6. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
7. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
8. IRIS2 already in trouble?
9. Intelsat contemplates next steps

Categories: Blogs, DTH/Satellite, Inside Satellite