mpeg2 license

[la_tristesse]

Hi there,

I recently ordered a second raspberry pi (REV B) because of the memory upgrade and now I'm asking myself if there is some way to use my License from my first Raspberry-Pi for the new one? Is this possible.?

Regards

[pluggy]

You want to cheat the foundation out of a second license fee ?

Since the licence is tied to the serial number of the SOC, I wouldn't think so.

[Guy999]

@ pluggy Quote: You want to cheat the foundation out of a second license fee ?

That's a bit hasty & unfair. The O/P may not realise the issues involved.

[pluggy]

OK, forget anything I said. You can read it here :

http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/

Having done battle with M$ licencing for a large proportion of my working life (probably the largest factor in deciding the viability of fixing a seriously broken computer), a couple of quid for a licence is neither here or there.

Get the serial number from the board and pay the foundation their due.

[la_tristesse]

No that's not want I meant. I dont want another license. I want to transfer my old license for the Raspberry Pi (Rev A) to my new Raspberry Pi (Rev B). Is this possible? I only need one license and I dont want to pay two times.

[Aydan]

The problem I see with this is that the existing licence cannot be invalidated, so they can't "take it back".
Can you really not afford the cost of a new licence?

Regards
Aydan

[flamaest]

I agree with this request.

I have 2 identical 1st Gen Pis and one of them never worked right, but I found out after setting it all up with KODI and buying the licence keys for both Pis. I have tried to rebuild this failing Pi and updated all the software from scratch and tried different cables, power supplies, memory cards, and this Pi keeps rebooting randomly like something is not right.

My 1st original Pi works great.

So now I got a new Pi-3 to replace this 2nd failing Pi unit, and I feel as though I should be able to remove the MPEG/VC1 keys from this defective unit and get them regenerated for my new Pi-3 unit. It not about being cheap, it is about getting an R-Pi to work the way it was supposed to.

[kusti8]

You can't. It's tied to your serial number with a special key. Otherwise , you would just have people buying one key for 10 Pis, which hurts the Foundation because that's money out of their pocket.

[gkreidl]

To keep the cost of the SOC as low as possible, MPEG2 and VC1 hardware decoding are disabled. Otherwise the price of the license would have to be included into every SOC and RPi board.
The Foundation made some special agreements with the patent holders allowing them to enable the license per SOC (based on the serial number). The money you pay for it goes to the patent holders. The Foundation doesn't earn any money with it.

[Theonlyindy]

I hope that's thee correct post to discuss my problem.

After searching the net for information about videodisplay I bought the two codecs for two Raspberrys (one for my Raspberry, one for a Raspberry which was a present) I got my codecs via mail and I filled them into the config.txt
Then came the surprise:
One is running perfectly and the other doesn't accept the codec. I checked the serial number several times and it is correct. The place in the config.txt is the same which I chose with the running one.

I already contacted the Foundation but without a result....what now?

[flamaest]

Did you triple check the code/s you supplied when buying the licenses? If those were indeed correct, then I have no answer. I don't think there is any support for this transaction model. Can you get your pi with issues replaced by the seller?

[Heater]

There is something here I don't understand.

Why do we ever need to pay a man in the middle anything to watch a video?

I'm watching videos all the time on my PC running Debian. Nobody has ever asked me for any money.

[Aydan]

There is something here I don't understand.

Why do we ever need to pay a man in the middle anything to watch a video?

I'm watching videos all the time on my PC running Debian. Nobody has ever asked me for any money.

the codecs are for the hardware decoder licence. For price reasons they have been omitted by default, and can be enabled by a bought codec licence. mpeg codecs cost licence money. If you didn't pay any, then you operate in a gray area.
Normally they are paid when you pay the hardware that uses them, e.g. your graphics card, tv or blueray player

Regards
Aydan

[flamaest]

In case you are running a PI-3, have you tried playing a DVD ISO without the codec licenses installed? I know it does not work on a PI-1, but I am seeing reports online of the PI-3 decoding DVD ISOs out of the box. not sure about B-ray ISOs....

[Heater]

Aydan,

If you didn't pay any, then you operate in a gray area.

I don't want to operate in any gray area.

As far as I know a stock Debian installation does not come with any such patent/copyright encumbered stuff.

But still I have access to more video than I am going to live long enough to enjoy.

Why do we need pay for these codecs ?

[Aydan]

Why do we need pay for these codecs ?

Because somebody spent millions to develop them. And they want to recoup the cost.
Most video codecs are patented, and most patent holders require licencing fees for usage.
That is what you pay for when buying the hardware decoder key.

Regards
Aydan

[rpdom]

Aydan,

If you didn't pay any, then you operate in a gray area.

I don't want to operate in any gray area.

As far as I know a stock Debian installation does not come with any such patent/copyright encumbered stuff.

But still I have access to more video than I am going to live long enough to enjoy.

Why do we need pay for these codecs ?

As I suspect you already know, the difference is between software and hardware decoding.

With hardware decoding, the cost of the licence is either already included in the price of the hardware (like the H264 decoder), or has an additional fee to unlock it.

Software decoding, such as on your Debian system, is the slightly grey area. It is accepted for personal use.

[Heater]

Aydan.

Because somebody spent millions to develop them. And they want to recoup the cost.

Do you really believe that?

I suspect that some guy came up with a more efficient video encoding algoritm and got paid a normal salary for his time.

Then his employers, or someone else, get hold of the copyright/patents on it.

Then we all have to pay those do nothings for doing nothing.

And the guy who came up with the idea got nothing much.

A bit like the music industry.

Why do I think this?

Because such a codec is a mathematical artifact. It does not matter how many millions you have to invest in solving a mathematical problem. There is a smart guy somewhere who can do it, or there is not.

It's immoral to collect a toll on that smart guys work for ever.

[jdb]

This thread is a necro so it's getting locked, but not without some explanations first:

The various patents for VC1 and MPEG-2 are cleverly written such that hardware implementations of an algorithm are patentable. The concept of a new encoding scheme itself is not the subject of the patent, the implementation is. Therefore hardware implementations of the encoding standard are subject to royalties.

As discussed elsewhere, this cost is not transmitted to the end users of Raspberry Pis by default. By purchasing a serial number-locked codec licence, decoder hardware is enabled at the firmware level.

As an aside, this resultant anti-pattern is effectively the inverse of what the Patent Office was set up to do - for a nominal registration fee and disclosure a design or invention could be issued with a patent. The onus was on the patent applicant to disclose the internal workings of the invention - allowing the advancement of the state of the art. The inverse of this case is an army of patent lawyers individually patenting every single facet of the internal workings of an overall invention with the express intention of preventing anyone from improving the design incrementally (because an incremental design would necessarily infringe any one of N patents). This is why large consortiums of companies acting in aggregate can extract licence fees (aka rent) from end-users. In the case of the Pi, the licence fee is a substantial fraction of the total sale price of the unit, which is why the cost is not imposed on customers by default.