Update 20121024: Read this Opus (CELT) proposal for DRM by Michael Feilen. Michael also added some clarification on rights and pricing of AAC+ via the DRMNA Yahoo Group. Read his post here.
Our friend Stephan Schaa (of HCJB Global Germany and Pappradio fame) wrote to the DRMNA Yahoo Group this morning..."
Adding
Opus as a free codec to the DRM System would give many benefits: At the
moment you have to pay royalties for the use of the "better" codecs AAC+ for
example. This has to be done if you produce receivers (for less than 1000 it's
free, maybe this is the reason that the number of units for DRM Receivers are so
small everytime), but the "bigger money" is made on the encoder side: about
$4000 (or more) have to be paid to dolby if you want to use AAC+. If - for
example - Brasil would opt to the DRM System and insists on a opus as free
codec, I think this would be a good idea..."
I'm guessing that existing hardware and software can be easily firmware upgraded to provide compatibility. I know we have readers from the Consortium, manufacturers and broadcasters. Can we convince them to give this emerging codec a try?
- The cost for equipping transmitters would fall a lot using Opus.
- As royalties for receivers using Opus only, receiver costs would go to zero, this receivers could be cheaper and manufacturers could produce higher numbers of units without problems.
- Most existing DRM Exciters can be updated to Opus without problems (for example the ones produced by Transradio).
- The Opus codec is or will be supported in Android, Apple and other Arm processor based platforms ( look at Rockbox)... This makes it much easier to build a software decoder for DRM @ Arm Processors and so to build open source radio sets.
I'm guessing that existing hardware and software can be easily firmware upgraded to provide compatibility. I know we have readers from the Consortium, manufacturers and broadcasters. Can we convince them to give this emerging codec a try?
