The new approach not only cuts rates by as much as half, but sets yearly caps between $2.5 million to $40 million per year, depending on the service or device type. Tech giants like Apple, Netflix or Samsung won't lose a significant chunk of their profit just to handle 4K, in other words. Moreover, any content that's completely free for viewers is now royalty-free. Public TV and ad-supported websites won't have to worry about coughing up cash.

This won't necessarily stop work on alternatives to HEVC, but it could prevent a lot of headaches with trying to create or switch to other 4K-friendly video standards, like Google's VP9. You may see HEVC in many more places than it would have gone otherwise, especially on low-profit devices like budget smartphones. Also, it could prevent some current 4K TV sets from becoming paperweights. Many of them support HEVC video, but it's less certain that they'll play VP9 properly or at all, even with an update. So long as the format takes off at all, you'll still be using that set when 4K is truly mainstream.

[Image credit: Jack Dempsey/Invision for LG/AP Images]