Katarzyna Petru
Which codec will take over from MPEG4 AVC (H.264)? HEVC (H.265) is still growing, AV1 is increasingly making its mark, but VVC – the official successor to HEVC – according to Rethink Research has virtually no chance for mass adoption.
For years, MPEG2 powered DVDs and digital television, before being replaced by MPEG4 AVC. Later, HEVC became the standard for 4K and HDR, and AV1 gained support from tech 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 a direct successor to HEVC. Released in 2020, it promised a bitrate reduction by half with the same 4K quality. However, four years later, virtually no one is implementing it. Alex Davies, a senior analyst at Rethink Research, assesses this unequivocally:
“It’s not entirely true that VVC is dead on arrival, but it has deviated so far from historical norms of codec adoption that in practice, that’s how it is. The market has no motivation to implement it. This is due to the massive increase in mobile and fixed internet bandwidth and a leap in device computing power. No one is demanding VVC, and AV1 and AOMedia are benefiting from that.”
In short: streaming services see no need to switch to VVC, and hardware manufacturers aren’t even offering hardware support for this codec.
AV1 is here. AV2 is on the way
AV1 – created by AOMedia and supported by Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Samsung – already has real implementations in streaming and hardware. However, it still falls short in scale compared to HEVC, which is projected to become the most widely used codec in the world only in 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 – the areas that VVC also targeted. However, even here analysts anticipate a slow adoption rate.
The first devices with hardware support for AV2 and VVC do not yet exist.
What’s next? A possible shift towards proprietary codecs and AI
Davies adds that the future may look quite 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 AI-based compression utilizing NPU chips in end devices. This could undermine the traditional block 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 widespread, the industry may already veer towards algorithms based on machine learning.
Summary: what is really the standard?
HEVC (H.265) – dominates in 4K, growing steadily.
AV1 – quickly gaining support from major companies and hardware.
VVC (H.266) – practically no adoption, lack of demand and lack of hardware.
AV2 – coming, but expansion will take years.
In practice, this means that for a long time the market will operate in a duo of HEVC + AV1, and the codec revolution – if it occurs – will likely come from a completely different direction than VVC.
