Destiny Media Tech Inc (DSNY)

[DoughDiligence]

Yes - this is a decent discussion which pushed me to look into the higher quality issue. Here is what I found.

(1) Youtube does support Ultra-HD video mode, but the default is set to auto-detect - so you get a lower, decent quality. I can change the speed to 2000p for 4k videos. When I did, the buffer symbol came on for a long while, too long to work well.

(2) Google started using their VP9 encoder to deliver these UHD videos. Their VP9 encoder is compatible with Chrome and Firefox, but not IE. It is royalty free in comparison to the H.264 and H.265 encoder options.

(3) I found an encoder comparison article that compared UHD encoders. The H.265 was better than VP9 and H.264. H.264 has a license fee attached to its use that tops out at $6.5 million per year per company that encodes or decodes H.264 videos. The new H.265 license fee tops out at 25 million per year per company. VP9 is free but it doesn't work with some browsers.

(4) I also found out about the Daala Project which is a Open Source encoder under-development that intends to leap past the H.265 solution with a different approach to encoding/decoding. This project is associated with Mozilla, et al. It has been under development since 2013, but the only video sample I found had bugs in it. It is not ready to go.

(5) The licensing agreement for Daala could allow Destiny to integrate it into a solution and still charge for Clipstream. This could allow Destiny to jump into the UHD video market to hurdle the competitors using H.265 or Vp9. However, Daala isn't due to be released early this year so Clipstream has to use Destiny's encoder for now.

In conclusion - there are problems for companies who want to deliver the next generation of video. Companies need to pay royalty fees for H.264 and H.265 - up to $25 million per year per company who send/receive/host more 100,000 videos. This minimum allows a small guy to start using the H.XXX software royalty-free. If companies use VP9 - IE browsers have problems, maybe others. An opinion by a Google employee stated that VP9 is not getting a lot of traction yet due to incompatibility issues. Now the Daala encoder might beat both of those, but it is not available yet. The Daala project home page shows comparisons between H.265 DCT methods and Daala methods here.

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/daala/demo1.shtml

As far as the 'levels' go, In 2013 - Destiny invited some contacts to test 10-13 buttons that ran sample videos at different resolutions so that Destiny engineers could adjust the software for various speeds. I believe they can expand that range to higher levels but they choose not to until they have working software. While I believe they can go higher, they can't match the H.265 technology with their own encoder. The developers of H.265 have been working on that technology for many years. That platform is also pushing device makers to include chip decoder on devices. The Daala technology might offer Destiny a Clipstream upgrade path in 2016 to get to Ultra-HD and beyond.