I think the patent count is a bit inflated due to many of the patents being the same thing patented in different countries.

I also don't get what's bad about the pool having a large number of patents. If you want to use H.264, don't you want all the relevant patents in the pool, so you can buy just one license to cover them all?

If the patents aren't essential - that is, you don't actually need them to implement the standard - then requiring companies to license them is just a way of transferring more money from licensees to certain patent holders. And it increases the chance that the pool will be able to block or intimidate any competing standards.

As I said previously, Nero's complaint appears to be that the original MPEG-2 patents have expired and thus they shouldn't have to license anything, but since MPEG LA keeps adding patents to the pool they have to keep paying as long as these additional patents are valid. So the problem is not the number of patents per se, but the fact that the MPEG-2 pool still has any (unexpired) patents in it at all.

The bad thing about MPEG-LA and their patent pool is that they contend that one cannot create a video codec without infringing on their IP. If true, they have a government granted monopoly on all present and future video codecs not already in the public domain.