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It's easy to jump on a company or a product for features that it doesn't have, and on the internet, the negative a lot of the time has a louder voice than the positives.
Since the Canon EOS RP which doesn't have 24p in Full HD record, but does in 4K without DPAF, PowerShot G7 X Mark III and PowerShot G5 X Mark II launched without 4K and/or 1080 recording in 24p, a lot of Canon users have been very vocal in their disapproval of the decisions along with asking why on earth the feature doesn't appear in their new cameras.
Now that the Canon EOS 90D and Canon EOS M6 Mark II have launched without 4K in 24p, it seems to be a new trend for Canon to omit this recording capability.
The question is why?
I posted a silly poll on Twitter last night asking why you think Canon has started to omit the ability and joke's aside, Steve Waldron gave us some food for thought on the question.
Is it because manufacturers have to pay licensing fees for different encode/decode in MP4 AVC?
From Wikipedia:
In countries where patents on software algorithms are upheld, vendors and commercial users of products that use H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use. This applies to the Baseline Profile as well.
This could very well be the reason, as Canon wants to protect their margins on lower-priced products. Keep in mind that the more expensive Canon EOS R does include 4K recording in 24p.
Now you may say, “well other manufacturers include it in their lower-priced products”, and you'd be correct. The difference I see is Canon continues to slowly increase market share in a shrinking market and have remained quite profitable, even though outside global economic events have eaten into profits. Canon continues to mention protecting margins in financial presentations.
When you're developing and designing a product and you have certain price points you'd like to hit, there are always trade-offs and you have to make decisions whether or not omitting a feature will affect the sales of your product, and it looks like Canon doesn't think removing 4K 24P in their “consumer” products will have a negative impact on the sales and profitability of the cameras.
I imagine that 4K 24p could be added via firmware on the technical side of things, but I'm not sure if licensing fees would be a roadblock with a firmware update. I have also have no idea how much these licensing fees are.
Now, none of this may be the case, but I think it's just a good guess.
If any other media outlets reading this have a chance to interview Canon engineers or marketing people, please ask the question.
Correction: The Canon EOS RP does record in 4K at 24p, but without DPAF, however, there is no Full HD 24p on the EOS RP. We have updated the story accordingly.
