Alliance for Open Media codecs

[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by iwod

So as a consumer if you want Youtube or Netflix 4K content you will have to buy a STB that support Vp9 or Av1. They won't be doing ANY HEVC content.

Netflix is certainly delivering UHD on devices that don't have VP9 hardware decoder support. And VP9 is a particularly challenging bitstream format for software decoding without high single-core CPU performance (this is much improved in AV1).

Tons of SmartTV and STB-like devices have way less CPU than a typical phone, so software decoding at 2160p is a non-starter. And replacement cycles are way slower for TVs and STBs than for phones and tablets.

Even if AV1 is an incredible success, companies would still have to deliver HEVC for legacy living room devices in 2025+. Heck, they will still have to deliver H.264 in 2025 for a number of device categories.

Personal computers and phones/tablets are by far the easiest markets for fast integration of new codec support. And lots of enterprises were still doing corporate content in WMV/VC-1 until they'd deprecated XP and Vista.

Massively improved technologies get the market moving, but even the best improvements can take a long time to become universally available in many markets.