H.264 still leads the pack, says JW Player s CTO Dave LaPalomento, but for more sophisticated publishers, VP9 offers benefits including bandwidth savings.
Zixi s Eric Bolten and the Streaming Video Alliance s Jason Thibeault debate the growth rate of 5G availability, adoption, and demand and the key contributing and inhibiting factors in this clip from their panel at Streaming Media East 2021.
What Is H.264?
This is an installment in our ongoing series of What Is.? articles, designed to offer definitions, history, and context around significant terms and issues in the online video industry.
Executive Summary
H.264 is the most widely used codec on the planet, with significant penetration in optical disc, broadcast, and streaming video markets. However, many uses of H.264 are subject to royalties, something that should be considered prior to its adaption. Other factors to consider include comparative quality against other available technologies, like Google’s WebM, as well as the general availability of decoding capabilities on target platforms and devices. This article discusses H.264 and competitive technologies from these perspectives.
What Is AV1?
This is another installment in our series of What Is.? articles, designed to offer definitions, history, and context around significant terms and issues in the online video industry.
The AV1 codec will be the first codec released by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), and it s scheduled to ship sometime between December 2016 and March 2017. It is positioned to replace Google s VP9 and to compete with the standards-based High Efficiency Video Codec (HEVC). While the codec s performance won t be known until it ships, one significant competitive advantage is the Alliance membership, which ensures the prompt deployment of AV1 playback in browsers, mobile devices, OTT, and smart TVs and the distribution of AV1-encoded content by YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon. HEVC enjoys a multiple year lead in hardware-based deployments, however, and some pundits question whether AV1 was created without infringing upon patents owned by H.264, HEVC, and other video-relat
Executive Summary
HTML5 rocketed to the forefront with Apple’s decision to forgo Flash and use HTML5 technology to deliver video to the iPad. Actual HTML5 usage, however, has been slowed by low HTML5-compatible browser penetration, the need to encode video into two or three formats for complete HTML5 compatibility, and the lack of feature parity with Flash, the predominant plug-in based technology for viewing video on the web.
HTML5 needs to be on the radar screen of all streaming media producers, but switching over to HTML5 does not appear to be a short-term priority as of this writing.