[free_bip]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I think I can at least sort of understand why they're going with this speed of release cadence. If the release cadence is too slow, you might end up with another JPEG situation where the new codec is undeniably better in every way, but nobody wants to implement it since the old standard was around for so long without any competition.

[dylan604]

If you're going to do that, then the new thing must be so much better than the old thing that makes the pain of switching to the new thing worth while.

By the time h.265 encoding was trying to gain traction, h.264 encoding speeds were very fast. The image improvement was negligible with the main benefit being smaller file sizes. For the average user, the increased encoding times did not justify that. The switch from MPEG-2 to h.264 had very noticeable quality improvements so it did make it worth while for the slower encodes until h.264 was locked and key code included in CPUs. It was similar to the adoption rates of DVD from VHS compared to Blu-ray from DVD.

[mirashii]

> For the average user, the increased encoding times did not justify that.

The average user is a consumer of media, not doing encoding themselves. A one time cost for higher encoding to save bandwidth / storage space many times over is almost always going to make some amount of sense.

The real issue here is just a standard chicken-and-egg problem. To use a new codec, you need it to be supported in end user devices. To get it to be supported, you need to show demand... for a thing that nobody can use yet.

[dylan604]

The switch from MPEG-2 to H.264 had that in droves with the cable companies updating their set top boxes. That was enough demand to drive hardware development. I don't know how many people have cut the cord as I haven't played in that field to see numbers in quite some time. I'm guessing there won't be a big push to switch out boxes to support AV2. Even shiny round disc sales are plummeting to the point there's not really a need for an at home player to use it either. This really feels like something for streaming only. Those can all be software decoders. Hopefully, they can make it work well on efficiency cores and not require GPU cores for decode. As you say, vast majority of people won't need to encode so sure make a GPU encoder

[craftkiller]

The modern set top box / dvd player is the chromecast/firestick/roku/smart tv. They lack the power to do software decoding so they NEED the hardware support. The video platforms want them to upgrade because it'll reduce their costs. Sometimes the same company owns both the platform and the streaming device, which should get things moving even faster.

[yunohn]

Sample size of one, but I always have preferred and continue to torrent h265 releases specifically for the amazing quality:size ratio, basically since they were available.

[cubefox]

> The image improvement was negligible with the main benefit being smaller file sizes.

That's a contradiction because quality improvement and file size improvement are just two sides of the same coin. You can't have a large quality improvement at the same bit rate without having a large file size reduction at the same quality.

[dylan604]

Yes, I stipulate your point, but people are not looking for better encodes at the same bit rate. They are only looking for not worse quality at much lower bit rate. One project I was working on had a hard file size limitation, and switching to h.265 was able to get the size under the limit. At one point, I was told to make it smaller by X MBs. The image wasn't even being looked at with each change. This is why I make the distinction the way that I did.

[mrandish]

> If the release cadence is too slow...

Another reason to get a new video codec standard finalized sooner is that hardware implementation and deployment in mass market consumer SOCs is glacially slow. On the software side, encoder and decoder performance tends to improve meaningfully in the first few years as optimization occurs. And those running large media distribution platforms prefer at least 12-18 months to evaluate and implement a new codec.

[throw0101a]

> […] but nobody wants to implement it since the old standard was around for so long without any competition.

Perhaps:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect