[ktta]

Nope, they pushed the expected release date to end of this year[1]. I was really hoping it would come out this month too, then I realized we won't see much adoption till 2019. 2018 will be spent with a couple releases of software decoders, and some adoption, and 2019 is when the hardware decoders will released. Which is when we can expect everyone to more to AV1.

But I'm still skeptical because HEVC might be more widespread with hardware decoders everywhere and people might just not care enough to move to the new standard. Unless MPEG-LA exploits its dominance really bad with license fees, then we can expect MPEG codecs to die off. Although I think x264 will still live.

[1]: https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/om_av1/attachments/sl...

(4th slide. This codec will be standardized after the experiments are removed and it is frozen to test software.)

[MikusR]

The problem with HEVC is HEVC Advance. A second patent pool that appeared 2 years ago.

[Veratyr]

Not just HEVC Advance. There are also some patent holders who aren't members of any pool, like Technicolour.

[mtgx]

I would've preferred it if AV1 was 2x better than HEVC, but I don't think even HEVC was 2x better than h.264. So if they can achieve at least 50% in all tests against HEVC, it may be a good enough improvement to the point where companies like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter adopt it, as well as tv show and movie torrent uploads (which has its own impact on codec adoption). Plus, YouTube is a given, and it's nice to hear that even Apple may adopt it and that Apple is actually going back on promoting HEVC support.

[ktta]

I agree that HEVC isn't a game changer.

I actually prefer x264 encoded video even though it results in much larger file sizes. Although HEVC has lower bitrate for supposedly same quality, my needs aren't constrained enough where I have to go for HEVC.

I hope AV1 doesn't lower the quality aspect since it is focused on being a primarily streaming codec with most of the companies being streaming focused (Google, Netflix, Amazon and Vidyo) and them focusing on better compression rate.

If I recall correctly HEVC was also meant to be a streaming codec and I feel like that lead to the lower quality compared to h264. It just doesn't feel that sharp although it is supposed to be 1080p. The blurring aspect is especially bad.

I don't think AOMedia guys will blow it though. I feel like they have a lot more expertise since there are people from multiple codecs (VP9, Daala, etc.) contributing to this.