Intel Paying RealNetworks $120M For Patents

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Wow, $120 million sure sounds like a lot of money to pay for these patents. When is the last time you used anything made by Real Networks?

Chipmaking giant Intel and digital media outfit Real Networks have announced a surprise deal that sees Intel paying RealNetworks $120 million for about 190 RealNetworks patents, 170 patent applications, and RealNetworks’ forthcoming next-generation video codec software. Under the deal, RealNetworks will continue to have the right to use its old patents in current and future products; however, the patents will belong to Intel, and the company is free to use them in its own products and/or license them out to others.
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it means that AMD, Nvidia, etc, will have a hard time building hardware support into their chips for codecs now belonging to Intel.
 
hehe, RealNetworks... yeah I remember that the single shittiest video/audio transferring out there... buffering...
 
Last time I used RealPlayer - late 90's. I didn't even know they were still around. Wow.
 
Word is that Real networks has a patent for "Buffering" no other patent information is available.
 
Steve said:
Wow, $120 million sure sounds like a lot of money to pay for these patents. When is the last time you used anything made by Real Networks?
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considering that there is real value in these and that apple just paid that for lawyers alone over patents it actually sounds like a good investment.
 
I remember watching porn on real media files because they were small and could stream over 28.8k
 
dear god.. Real networks just got a wad of cash.. Now they will try to do something with it. They should ave just let it die then buy the scraps for penuts
 
Great now they are going to bribe people to build their shitty player into everything that comes out and I'm gonna get those "upgrade to real player x.x pro! Only x.xx dollars! Remember that crap? Like anyone wants to pay for that crap.

And then I'm gonna have to spend my thanksgiving and christmas and new years being the family computer geek and having one more thing to do, removing that stupid real player from the startup of all my computer illiterate relatives pc's.

How have they kept the lights on all these years?

Can't they just go away silently into the night?
 
The lights are still on -- and RealNetworks is in a ton of other businesses still (things most people don't know about).

That deal gives them about 370M in the bank. I wonder what's next...
 
EchoMatrix said:
dear god.. Real networks just got a wad of cash.. Now they will try to do something with it. They should ave just let it die then buy the scraps for penuts
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Thinking the same, they must be low on cash with no investors willing to take a chance.
 
Sounds like Intel could use this on their phones?
 
Someone else already owns the patent for "good video compression", so RealNetworks video codec under development can't be good, at least without violating a patent Intel or Real doesn't own.
 
Stone Cold said:
Someone else already owns the patent for "good video compression", so RealNetworks video codec under development can't be good, at least without violating a patent Intel or Real doesn't own.
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It is actually the other way around - Real was figuring out video compression long before most other players. Hard for a company of their size to go after any infringers... Intel can use this on their phones, laptops, etc -- remember when they started showing off dual screen video (similar to the AirPlay idea)? Using some higher end codecs, they could easily compress higher than 1080p video and send it to a set top box. As 4K and 8k TVs come into focus, this will become more important.
 
this will turn out to be bad news for real network when intel turns it into something great. still, real network wouldn't have done anything good compare to what intel's researcher can do with those patterns.
 
RealPlayer used to be really *buffering*...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................popular back in the day.
 
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