What do you mean by "broadcast licence"?. Streaming web video was part of that dispute, and fees for web video <i>providers</i> are a cruicial part of Mozilla's argument. As they're only due to announce what the fees for publishing H.264 will be at the end of this month we'll have to wait for then to see if they are onerous or not.<p>I've also heard that the only reason Microsoft's VC-1 codec is in the Blu-Ray standard is because MPEG-LA were playing hardball on their H.264 licence fees.<p>Here's the manager of Blu-Ray making the very simple point that surrendering to a single patented standard is only going to let them ratchet up prices:<p><i>"There are other advantages to having two compression techniques," Doherty says. "Moving forward, the technologies can have competition to help drive down licensing fees and improve picture quality."</i><p>from here:<p><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/117681/bluray_disc_to_support_mpeg4_vc1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pcworld.com/article/117681/bluray_disc_to_support...</a><p>If Apple (who also fell out with them about AAC payment terms) and Blu-ray need to play games to achieve reasonable terms then what hope do the small businesses have, especially when the standard response is <i>"let's all lock ourselves into this one codec, what could possibly go wrong?"</i>