[unlord]

The article claims that "Google wants control, and JPEG XL could take that away from them" however this is disingenuous. The JPEG XL format was co-authored by Google employees, and they have just as much say over the direction of that format as they do WebP.

The JPEG XL authors make claims about it's superiority over formats like AVIF, but there is no support or even timeline for hardware encode or decode on important platforms like mobile.

By contrast, Qualcomm is adding support for AV1 encoding to Snapdragon X (https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/pcs-and-...) which could lead to efficient encoding of AVIF photos and animations.

[OuterVale]

Google most definitely had input in the creation of the format, but from all I can research, only at an early stage. As the project grew away from Pik they seem to have dropped interest and moved away from it.

I have updated the article with more details about their involvement for transparency.

If you have any information you can share with further information regarding Google's input, I'd open to hear it as evidence of their input as a company beyond preliminary stages has been difficult to find.

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Regarding JPEG XL's mobile support, it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success. The lack of support also disincentivises manufacturers to prioritise support.

[unlord]

> Regarding JPEG XL's mobile support, it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success. The lack of support also disincentivises manufacturers to prioritise support.

There was literally no involvement from any hardware vendor in the standardization of JPEG XL. It went from a Call for Proposals in Sept 2018 to Committee Draft in Aug 2019 with very little time for industry feedback. Contrast this with AV1 which had involvement from hardware vendors Intel, NVIDIA, Arm, AMD, Broadcom, Amlogic from the beginning as well as companies who ship media on hardware at scale such as Cisco, Netflix, Samsung and yes Google. These companies reviewed and provided significant feedback on the format that made it suitable for hardware implementation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JyrkiAlakuijala is a lead on the project and a Google employee, and active in JPEG XL development https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/commits?author=jyrkialakuij...

[OuterVale]

I very much agree with your observation that the involvement from hardware vendors was minimal. It definitely would have been advantageous to slow down, and it's beyond disappointing that it wasn't pursued further. They absolutely dropped the ball in that regard.

AV1, however, is first and foremost a video format. A very popular one at that. It's perfect for video, and that explains the great industry support. The fact it is the most promising option for video is why it's seen hardware vendor support, not because AVIF is ideal. JPEG XL unfortunately doesn't have this luxury, but still could have done better. This doesn't mean that JPEG XL can't see support now, though, and there are plenty of opportunities for hardware support now it's been proven viable.

While there are certainly employees at Google that have contributed to JPEG XL recently, I'm still yet to see any evidence that the company itself has provided any direct support lately.

[Latty]

Isn't that kind of the point though? AV1/AVIF has an extremely strong case for hardware implementations: you need efficient (both in terms of processing and compression) video decoding on modern devices because the battery cost/bandwidth cost is so high otherwise.

Image decoding is nice to have, but less important. When you are deciding to put custom hardware into a device, that's a huge investment in something only useful for that one task. Being compatible with a video format so you can share that hardware between the two tasks is a huge win for hardware manufacturers who get two-for-one, and for the rate of adoption.

With AV1 already very efficient and rolled out in a lot of hardware already, it just has a huge advantage.

[OuterVale]

While that most definitely is a consideration, AVIF lacks many features and much of the functionality offered by JPEG XL. An investment in JPEG XL, while only being beneficial for one task like you say, would have huge benefits given just how many images we see and process on the web.

AVIF certainly gets the hardware support advantage, but it fails in other regards where JPEG XL shines. Looking at it either way, JPEG XL is far from slow, and I'd argue that the other benefits outweigh that single shortcoming. Bandwidth should also be treated as a consideration, as you mentioned, and JPEG XL generally leads to smaller file sizes.

Realistically, this boils down to AVIF being largely worse than JPEG XL, with the exception of performance. Performance that could be improved for JPEG XL should hardware vendors choose to provide better support.

[Latty]

Any features that matter to consumers more than slightly better battery life? I haven't seen one yet despite people always touting "better features".

It feels to me like JPEG XL's advantages are mostly hypothetical, and practically AVIF is the format that has more value. I'm no expert on this, to be clear, but I have yet to be convinced despite all the JPEG XL hype on HN.

[unlord]

> While that most definitely is a consideration, AVIF lacks many features and much of the functionality offered by JPEG XL.

What features are these? You have not named a single concrete advantage. The places where AVIF out-performs JPEG XL are exactly where it make sense as an image format for the web: high fidelity images with bit rates at or below 1 bit/pixel. Nobody is browsing the web on a 16-bit panel and AVIF supports 12bpc images anyway.

Unfortunately, JPEG XL authors chose not include AVIF when they performed a subjective image comparison in 2020 under controlled viewing conditions (https://research.google/pubs/benchmarking-jpeg-xl-lossylossl...), but previous subjective studies showed AVIF outperforming PIK and FUIF over the evaluated bit-rates.

[paulddraper]

> it makes sense it would see limited development if the company that manages one of the biggest mobile players has been the greatest restriction on their success

Huh? Isn't Apple pro-JPEG XL?

[OuterVale]

I was referring to Google with Android. You're correct in thinking Apple is pro JPEG XL.

[janwas]

> which could lead to efficient encoding of AVIF photos

Efficient in what sense? HW encoders usually only explore a fraction of the search space, and in the case of JPEG often result in 3..5 bit per pixel images.