[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.