Shortly after our last edition went to press before the holiday break, independent licensing administrator HEVC Advance announced a series of adjustments to its royalty rate structure for the HEVC digital video coding standard, also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, which should throw a spanner in the works. The new terms include abandoning all royalties for public TV broadcasting, and free content distribution to OTA commercial broadcasting and internet content distribution. Most notably, after the original uproar in July 2015, the administrator has decided to reduce royalty rates in the categories of mobile devices, 4K UHD TVs, and connected home devices – which covers set tops, game consoles, Blu-ray players, PCs, and mobile and PC software apps. The…