Katarzyna Petru
Which codec will take over from MPEG4 AVC (H.264)? HEVC (H.265) is still growing, AV1 is increasingly asserting its position, but VVC – the official successor to HEVC – according to Rethink Research, has practically no chance of mass adoption.
For years, MPEG2 drove DVDs and digital television, before being replaced by MPEG4 AVC. Later, HEVC became the standard for 4K and HDR, and AV1 gained support from technology giants as a free alternative. Now the industry is slowly looking for the next generation of codecs – with an eye on 4K, 8K, VR, and reducing data transmission costs.
Is VVC "dead on arrival"?
Theoretically, the next step was supposed to be VVC (H.266) – a codec designed as the direct successor to HEVC. Released in 2020, it promised to halve the bitrate while maintaining the same 4K quality. However, four years later, practically no one is implementing it. Alex Davies, a senior analyst at Rethink Research, assesses it unequivocally:
"It's not entirely true that VVC is dead on arrival, but it has deviated so much from historical codec adoption norms that in practice, it is. The market has no motivation to implement it. This is due to the tremendous increase in mobile and fixed internet bandwidth, as well as the exponential growth in device processing power. No one is demanding VVC, and this is benefiting AV1 and AOMedia."
In short: streaming services do not see the need to transition to VVC, and hardware manufacturers are not even offering hardware support for this codec.
AV1 is already here. AV2 is on the way
AV1 – developed by AOMedia and backed by Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Samsung – already has real implementations in streaming and hardware. However, it still lags behind in scale compared to HEVC, which is forecasted to become the most commonly used codec in the world by 2028, surpassing MPEG4 AVC. The next generation, AV2, is expected to be completed by the end of 2025. AV2 is set to bring greater efficiency in 4K, 8K and VR – areas that VVC also targeted. However, even here analysts anticipate a slow pace of adoption.
The first devices with hardware support for AV2 and VVC do not yet exist.
What next? A possible turn towards proprietary codecs and AI
Davies adds that the future may look completely different from previous generations of codecs:
“There is still a chance that the largest streaming services will start developing their own internal codecs. Additionally, there is a trend towards switching to AI-based compression, utilising NPU chips in end devices. This could undermine the traditional block-based approach to image encoding – but this is a perspective much further out than the scope of our forecast.”
In other words: before AV2 or VVC become mainstream, the industry may already be turning towards machine learning-based algorithms.
Summary: what really is the standard?
HEVC (H.265) – dominates in 4K, steadily growing.
AV1 – rapidly gaining support from major companies and equipment.
VVC (H.266) – practically no adoption, lack of demand and lack of equipment.
AV2 – on the way, but expansion will take years.
In practice, this means that for a long time to come, the market will operate in a duo of HEVC + AV1, and the codec revolution – if it happens – will likely come from a completely different direction than VVC.
