Cisco working on royalty-free alternative to H.265

Cisco Systems has announced in a blog post that, owing to the high cost of patent licensing for the H.265 codec, it has been working on a project to develop a replacement video codec, codenamed Thor. The company is working with patent lawyers and consultants to avoid or work around the many patents that exist in the field of video codec design.

The project is not yet complete, but Cisco made a first release two weeks ago. The codec is open source, and has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a contribution to the standards work that the IETF is doing on royalty free video codecs in its NetVC workgroup.

Cisco has said that it will continue to develop Thor over the coming months and is inviting others to participate in the development and patent analysis, or to provide Intellectual Property Rights on a royalty free basis.