Bob - when will the AMBE patents expire? I know its years away, but are we
talking 5-10 years or 20?
-73 de Anthony, KE7HQY
________________________________
From: Bob Snyder <rsny...@toontown.erial.nj.us>
To: dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, June 7, 2010 6:01:45 AM
Subject: Re: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Codec2 development - open source vocoder
On Jun 6, 2010, at 8:18 PM, a cutler22 wrote:
>
> The prospect of an open-source vocoder, ham-developed would open a
> lot of doors in the way of experimentation, and reduce the $$$
> barrier. A DSTAR protocol implementing Codec2 Digital Voice would
> significantly drop the entrance and appeal to a much wider audience!
>
> -73 de Anthony, KE7HQY
Given the amount of gear already out there and the challenges in
switching it over to use a different codec, I suspect that the AMBE
patents will expire long before any significant adoption of an
alternative, currently-unfinished codec.
Having free quality codecs is certainly not a bad thing; I just don't
see a real use for it with D-Star. It might be useful to serve as a
software-only equivalent of the DVDongle, but the AMBE chip is still
going to need to be somewhere in the path if you want the signal to
reach RF and be understood by the existing infrastructure.
73,
Bob N2KGO
