[Icecast-dev] MPEG DASH

[Daniel James]

Hi Thomas,
> I wrote solid IPR evaluation for a reason.

It might be helpful to ask bitmovin as a starting point, they have
released the reference code under LGPL:

http://www.bitmovin.net/libdash.html

The LGPL preamble says:

"we insist that any patent license obtained for a version of the library
must be consistent with the full freedom of use specified in this license."

Personally, I don't see the point of adaptive streaming and the implied
variation in quality. Either the quality you are streaming at is
acceptable, or you are wasting bandwidth by streaming with too high a
bitrate, perhaps due to an inefficient codec.

I suppose the reasoning is that drops in quality are preferable to
playback interruptions, but why tolerate either in a well-designed
system? Adaptive streaming seems to say "we know the Internet is not
really cable TV, but we are going to work around that by providing a
cruddy picture for those times when available bandwidth does not align
with our business model" :-)

In the Icecast community, we might gain more by promoting Opus as a more
efficient replacement for MP3 streaming, for example.

Cheers!

Daniel