Feb 15, 2018 - The last patent covering the still ubiquitous MPEG-2 codec recently expired in. Software and sell hardware without paying license fees for MPEG-2 content. Of note, the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer has hardware. Out the Equifax hack was even worse than we thought (TechRepublic). Mar 13, 2013 - In order to enjoy more diverse media playback on your Raspberry Pi. In this case you need an MPEG-2 license to decode the video on the.
Even modern fast CPUs struggle to decode HD video in real time, so modern graphics cards have the ability to do it instead. Graphics processors, or GPUs, have many times more cores than CPUs, but they're a lot simpler. This means they're better suited to drawing video or 3d scenes, where it's usually possible to divide the picture up into pieces that can be processed in parallel. The RPI has a really slow processor, so is even less capable of decoding video itself, known as 'software rendering'. Luckily, because its chip is intended for video oriented set top boxes, it contains a decent GPU that is capable of decoding HD video in the three main video formats used today. However, as rcxdude mentioned, those decoding algorithms are not free, and is controlled with a license key.
Vlc has no access to this video decoding hardware if it's locked, so must use the CPU. That's painfully inadequate on the pi. To expand on the price point: The Raspberry Pi foundation could have opted for a volume license for all Raspberry Pi devices to be licensed from the get go.
However while this is fine for Microsoft and the like, it would have gone easily into the multi-thousand-pound range as all they can give is estimated sales and that would have pushed up prices of the unit itself. Considering how cheap it is for individual licenses and the very tinkerer nature of RPi itself, it made more sense to ask users to purchase single device licenses, install them manually and probably save everyone some money overall. To expand on the 'what is it' point: What you're buying is a license key that the codec itself requires be present before accepting or working on any audio or video stream sent to it. I believe the codec is part of most distros as it's just a few Kb, but without licensing it's essentially useless.
codeclicence Licence key and codec options in config.txt Hardware decoding of additional codecs can be enabled by that is locked to the CPU serial number of your Raspberry Pi. DecodeMPG2 decodeMPG2 is a licence key to allow hardware MPEG-2 decoding, e.g. DecodeWVC1 decodeWVC1 is a licence key to allow hardware VC-1 decoding, e.g.
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If you have multiple Raspberry Pis and you've bought a codec licence for each of them, you can list up to eight licence keys in a single config.txt, for example decodeMPG2=0x12345678,0xabcdabcd,0x87654321. This enables you to swap the same SD card between the different Pis without having to edit config.txt each time.
This article uses content from the eLinux wiki page, which is shared under the.