What better way to kick off our 2021 coverage of mobile video than by picking up on a narrative that defined and shaped the video entertainment ecosystem during 2020, and was covered in depth by Wireless Watch’s sister service, Faultline, which provides weekly analysis of digital video technologies and business models? This theme was video codecs, or more specifically, patent royalties – the perpetual thorn in the side of the video streaming industry. Eyes generally roll back into heads whenever codec royalties are mentioned in conversation – an unfortunate side-effect of some five years of division and chaos. The video codec scene has become so politically charged in recent years that it has driven the world’s greatest codec minds to…