Samsung has finally signed up for the royalty-free video codec group, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), in what is sure to throw the cat among the pigeons at this week’s big broadcast show, NAB 2019, where MPEG will be demonstrating many advances in its own codec technologies, targeting 5G applications among others, and pushing its own royalty-free option too. Samsung could be interested in getting on board to influence developments around AV2, the successor to the AV1 codec currently in development as AOMedia’s alternative to the other major codec, HEVC. Samsung is also a member of HEVC Advance, the patent pool behind that would-be standard, but will want to keep its options open as both technologies fight to dominate…