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I’ve been involved in a seemingly never-ending debate that started with the dubious (to me) concept of blaming Brightcove’s recent layoffs on HEVC licensing practices. The three questions involved are:
- Was HEVC’s licensing structure an aberration or similar to other technologies?
- Was HEVC a commercial success despite these licensing practices?
- Why didn’t non-premium content publishers adopt it?
I have strong opinions on these issues; you have strong opinions on these issues. So, I wanted to check sources that I thought had no opinions, and turned to AI. Boy, was I wrong; it turns out AI has plenty of opinions.
I created three prompts and fed them to Chat GPT, Perplexity, and Gemini Deep Research. When Gemini (from Google) provided this gem, seemingly straight from an AOM press release, I decided to ignore Gemini; any AI that considers VP9 and AV1 royalty-free in 2025 (or even 2019) is an oxymoron. It may be artificial, but it’s not intelligent, and its obviously biased opinion is not worth the reference.
The emergence and strategic promotion of royalty-free alternatives, VP9 and particularly AV1, provided publishers with a viable and increasingly attractive path forward. Backed by major internet platforms and browser vendors who viewed HEVC’s licensing model as untenable for the web, these codecs offered comparable or superior efficiency without the associated licensing risks and costs. This fundamentally altered the competitive landscape, giving publishers a strong reason not to choose HEVC.
So, I proceeded with Chat GPT and Perplexity and here’s what I found.
Contents
1. Was HEVC Unique in Its Licensing Approach?
To explore whether HEVC’s licensing structure was truly unprecedented, I asked each AI:
“Based on publicly known characteristics such as the number of patent pools, the role of bilateral licensing, litigation activity, number of SEP owners, and impact on adoption, how similar is the licensing model of HEVC to:
-
- Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 family)
- Cellular (4G/LTE/5G)
- Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 family)
Please provide a similarity score for each on a scale of 1–10, where 10 means “very similar” and 1 means “very different.” Include commentary on each factor to support your scoring.”
The results? The answers diverged sharply. Perplexity found HEVC’s licensing model more similar to Wi-Fi (7/10) than to cellular (4/10), citing both markets’ reliance on patent pools, the presence of bilateral licensing tensions, and a moderate degree of litigation. ChatGPT saw it the other way around, rating HEVC far closer to cellular (8/10 vs. 4/10 for Wi-Fi), pointing to overlapping pools, bilateral licensing gaps, and international FRAND litigation.
ChatGPT, on the other hand, came to the opposite conclusion: HEVC resembled cellular more closely (8/10 vs. Wi-Fi’s 4/10), noting the multiple overlapping pools, widespread bilateral gaps, international enforcement via FRAND lawsuits, and a similar pattern of fractured SEP ownership and market-driven adoption behavior.
So who’s right? That probably depends on whether you weigh licensing structure (Perplexity’s focus) or licensing dynamics (ChatGPT’s). But the more important takeaway is this: despite disagreeing on which ecosystem HEVC most closely resembled, both AIs agreed on the big picture, that HEVC’s licensing model wasn’t an aberration in the broader world of tech and IP.
As ChatGPT put it, “HEVC’s licensing more closely resembles cellular than Wi-Fi, with multiple pools, device royalties, and limited coverage—but that’s not unique in tech.” Perplexity added, “HEVC’s fragmentation across MPEG LA, Access Advance, and Velos Media was unusual by video standards, but the concept of multi-pool royalties was already common in wireless.”
HEVC’s licensing structure might have felt unique to web-first video publishers, but from a global patent strategy perspective, it followed well-established norms. The fact that two AI systems arrived at the same conclusion via entirely different reasoning only strengthens the case: HEVC didn’t break the system. It just landed in a part of the industry that had never seen it before.
Bottom line: HEVC wasn’t some licensing Frankenstein. It followed existing models, but encountered an industry that had never experienced it before.
2. Was HEVC a Commercial Success (in Hardware)?
Here I asked,
“Was HEVC (H.265) a commercial success? Please evaluate this question primarily in terms of hardware adoption—whether it was widely integrated into relevant consumer and professional devices—and secondarily in terms of platform adoption and market impact. Support your assessment with facts and, if possible, provide a one-sentence conclusion.”
In this case, AI was remarkably consistent. Both tools agreed that HEVC was a commercial success in hardware platforms and premium ecosystems.
Perplexity stated that “by 2025, 100% of smart TVs and OTT devices supported HEVC, driven by the 4K/HDR boom,” and concluded that HEVC had become the “de facto codec for 4K/HDR delivery.” ChatGPT reached a similar conclusion, though in more measured terms, noting HEVC’s essential role in UHD Blu-ray, Apple’s mobile ecosystem, and 4K streaming from platforms like Netflix and Prime Video.
Both cited major milestones: Apple’s native support in iOS and macOS starting in 2017; HEVC decoding in Nvidia, Intel, and AMD GPUs by 2016; and widespread integration in professional cameras, contribution encoders, and game consoles.
In short, HEVC was a requirement, not a nice-to-have, for 4K HDR delivery. And those markets adopted accordingly.
There was a brief reference to software decode limitations and browser support gaps, but neither Perplexity nor ChatGPT considered these relevant to hardware adoption. As both noted, HEVC royalties were primarily collected from devices with decoders, and those devices were ubiquitous by 2020.
I realize this defines “success” through a narrow lens—namely, the one used by IP owners and licensing administrators. The revenue model depended on encoder and especially decoder sales, and on that front, adoption was nearly universal.
Yes, some segments—like browser-based playback and general-purpose publishers—were left out in the cold. But that wasn’t a licensing failure. It was a market mismatch. The gazillions of H.264-compatible legacy players made it totally unrealistic to expect HEVC to completely displace H.264. It didn’t, and it won’t. AVC will almost certainly remain a required delivery format into the 2030s. Failing to meet commercially unrealistic expectations doesn’t equal failure.
Final scorecard: 9 or 10 out of 10 for commercial hardware success. As Perplexity summed up, “HEVC succeeded commercially as the de facto codec for 4K/HDR delivery, overcoming licensing fragmentation through broad hardware integration.”
3. Why Didn’t General-Purpose Publishers Adopt HEVC?
Here I asked,
HEVC (H.265) achieved near-universal adoption in modern smartphones, smart TVs, streaming boxes, and other video playback hardware. It is also used by major platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV+ to deliver 4K and HDR content. However, many general-purpose publishers (i.e., not premium 4K/HDR streamers) did not adopt HEVC, despite its compression advantages over AVC.
Please rate and analyze the relative importance of the following potential barriers to HEVC adoption among non-premium content publishers. Use a scale from 1–10 where 10 indicates a very strong influence, and include brief commentary for each.
-
- Licensing uncertainty and risk
- Lack of monetizable use cases (e.g., no 4K/HDR)
- Lack of browser support
- Encoding cost and complexity
- Compatibility and reach constraints
- Status quo bias / Institutional inertia
Are there any other major reasons that might explain this adoption gap?
This is where the AIs and I part company.
Perplexity rated the most significant adoption barriers as:
-
Licensing uncertainty and risk: 9/10
-
Lack of monetizable use cases (e.g., no 4K): 8/10
-
Status quo bias: 8/10
-
Lack of browser support: 7/10
-
Encoding complexity and cost: 7/10
-
Compatibility and reach: 6/10
ChatGPT scored similarly but downplayed status quo bias (4/10) and emphasized the disconnect between HEVC’s value (for 4K HDR) and what publishers were actually distributing (720p/1080p SDR). Their conclusion was that licensing uncertainty was a significant reason for non-premium content producers to avoid HEVC.
I don’t buy it.
Yes, licensing was complex. But this wasn’t insurmountable for companies with a business case. Netflix adopted HEVC in 2014. Amazon followed. So did Disney+. The real divide wasn’t technical or legal—it was financial.
If you had a compelling reason to adopt HEVC, like delivering 4K content or optimizing HDR delivery, you did. If you didn’t, you didn’t, and then blamed licensing. But tellingly, you didn’t adopt VP9 or AV1 either.
My take? Publishers didn’t eschew HEVC because they perceived the licensing provisions were awful. These provisions didn’t even apply to content producers. There was minimal risk of content royalties for free internet video from when Access Advance (then HEVC Advance) rolled back the content royalty provisions for in 2015 until 2023, when Avanci launched its content pool, which included AV1 and VP9. Given HEVC’s hardware success, streaming publishers were complaining about a licensing policy that didn’t apply to them, and that device manufacturers were happy to pay.
Where’s the Beef?
I know what you’re thinking: So Jan checks AI for objectivity, and when he doesn’t like the answer, he swaps in his opinion. Slow clap, right? But that’s actually the point.
AI doesn’t weigh arguments. It regurgitates the dominant narrative. And if the dominant narrative is wrong, so is the output.
Google trained Gemini on its AV1-friendly content, and remarkably, AV1 remains royalty-free as of 2025. From the moment publishers discovered that they might owe a license for H.264, there was communal outrage, which only receded when MPEG LA decided to forgo royalties on free Internet content.
The predominant sentiment was that video, for some strange reason, should be “royalty-free,” as if it’s different from any other patented technology. Ogg Theora, a dubiously open-source codec, was elevated to vaunted status, and Google promised to remove the evil H.264 codec from Chrome (and never did), forcing Firefox to support it (horrors!).
Meanwhile, Google received accolades for shipping the VP8 codec, which is wonderfully open-source, except for those pesky patents licensed from MPEG LA, which also apply to VP9, by the way. Then, the Alliance for Open Media launched AV1 in 2018, sparking a press frenzy so intense that the same press largely overlooked the Sisvel VP9/AV1 patent pools launched in 2019. Even today, after Avanci included AV1 in its video pool in 2023 and Access Advance did the same in 2025, most press mentions of AV1 inevitably include the terms ‘open-source’ and ‘royalty-free’ somewhere in the article, with Sisvel, Avanci, and Access Advance conspicuously absent.
Meanwhile, in back in 2015, Access Advance (then HEVC Advance) had the temerity to launch a pool that charged as much as $1.20 for the most critical technology in a 4K TV, and attempt to collect .005% for the technology that drove consumers back to Best Buy and launched the quality phase of OTT programming.
The trade press and message boards erupted with outrage, and ultimately, the head of MPEG itself declared HEVC licensing “broken” and resigned. In truth, I was part of that outrage.
What we all missed was that HEVC launched a boom of 4K/HDR TV sets. Starting in 2015 or so, just two years after HEVC finalized, HEVC became a premium feature, and soon thereafter, a must-have feature that TV manufacturers were happy to pay for. Once Netflix adopted HDR, all other premium services had to follow suit. While all of us were banging out HEVC hate on our keyboards during the day, we were happily watching it on Smart TVs at night, though strangely, this glow never reached the patent owners who funded its development.
HEVC didn’t fail. It got framed. Standards-based codecs were “bad,” and “open-source codecs” were good, and if they weren’t truly open source, well, we can just ignore any details that interfere with the narrative.
This was the data ChatGPT and Perplexity were trained on, so it comes as no surprise that their conclusions are biased in that direction. They don’t ask the obvious questions, because they’re not trained to question anything. Just to reflect it.
The bottom line for HEVC usage is that those publishers who could make a business case for using it, did, despite the patent landscape. Those that couldn’t, didn’t, and didn’t use VP9 or AV1 either, despite similar (VP9) or greater (AV1) bandwidth savings. The fact that those bandwidth savings weren’t accessible via browser-based playback until Chrome enabled HEVC playback in 2022 didn’t help, and strengthened the case for VP9 and AV1, to little avail.
So, yeah. While AI is great for many, many things, supplying an objective opinion is not one of them. What you’re getting is the collective impressions of the data that AI is trained on.
And sometimes, that data is flat-out wrong. In these instances, AI will be too.
Here are the prompts and the responses.
Appendix I: Prompts
Prompt 1: How Different was HEVC from Wi-Fi and Cellular
You are a neutral expert in video technology and standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing, with no previous opinions about video codecs or wireless technologies. Your goal is to objectively compare the licensing structure of HEVC to that of Wi-Fi and Cellular technologies.
Question:
Based on publicly known characteristics such as the number of patent pools, the role of bilateral licensing, litigation activity, number of SEP owners, and impact on adoption, how similar is the licensing model of HEVC to:
- Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 family)
- Cellular (4G/LTE/5G)
Please provide a similarity score for each on a scale of 1–10, where 10 means “very similar” and 1 means “very different.” Include commentary on each factor to support your scoring.
Prompt 2: Was HEVC a Commercial Success Despite Licensing Complexity?
You are a neutral expert in digital media and codec adoption, with no previous opinions on HEVC or its competitors. Your goal is to objectively assess whether HEVC was a commercial success, given the known complexity of its licensing environment.
Question:
Was HEVC (H.265) a commercial success? Please evaluate this question primarily in terms of hardware adoption—whether it was widely integrated into relevant consumer and professional devices—and secondarily in terms of platform adoption and market impact. Support your assessment with facts and, if possible, provide a one-sentence conclusion.
Prompt 3: Why HEVC has Little Third-Party Publisher Support
You are a neutral, independent expert in video compression and intellectual property, with no prior involvement in the video codec industry and no preconceived opinions about specific technologies. Your task is to analyze the following question objectively and factually, based only on industry norms, historical events, and current adoption patterns.
Question:
HEVC (H.265) achieved near-universal adoption in modern smartphones, smart TVs, streaming boxes, and other video playback hardware. It is also used by major platforms like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV+ to deliver 4K and HDR content. However, many general-purpose publishers (i.e., not premium 4K/HDR streamers) did not adopt HEVC, despite its compression advantages over AVC.
Please rate and analyze the relative importance of the following potential barriers to HEVC adoption among non-premium content publishers. Use a scale from 1–10 where 10 indicates a very strong influence, and include brief commentary for each.
- Licensing uncertainty and risk
- Lack of monetizable use cases (e.g., no 4K/HDR)
- Lack of browser support
- Encoding cost and complexity
- Compatibility and reach constraints
- Status quo bias / Institutional inertiaAre there any other major reasons that might explain this adoption gap?
Appendix II: Responses
Question 1: HEVC Similarity to Wi-Fi / Cellular – Perplexity
HEVC vs. Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11): Similarity Score: 7/10
Key Factors:
- Patent Pools
- HEVC: Managed by multiple pools (e.g., HEVC Advance, MPEG LA), creating fragmentation.
- Wi-Fi: Dominated by the Sisvel Wi-Fi 6 pool ($0.50/device) but faces competition from bilateral licensors (Qualcomm, Nokia)25.
- Similarity: Both use pools but face challenges from bilateral licensing and fragmented SEP ownership.
- Bilateral Licensing
- Litigation Activity
- Number of SEP Owners
- Impact on Adoption
HEVC vs. Cellular (4G/LTE/5G): Similarity Score: 4/10
Key Factors:
- Patent Pools
- Bilateral Licensing
- Litigation Activity
- Number of SEP Owners
- Impact on Adoption
Summary
- HEVC and Wi-Fi share moderate similarity (7/10) due to reliance on patent pools, bilateral licensing tensions, and transparency challenges.
- HEVC and Cellular differ significantly (4/10), as Cellular’s bilateral-heavy, cross-licensed model and geopolitical litigation dynamics contrast with HEVC’s pool-driven approach.
HEVC’s licensing complexity aligns more closely with Wi-Fi’s emerging challenges, while Cellular’s mature, bilateral ecosystem remains distinct.
Chat GPT
HEVC vs Wi-Fi
Similarity Score: 4/10
Patent Pools:
Wi-Fi patents are largely licensed through bilateral agreements, with no active, centralized patent pools covering the full standard. HEVC has three competing pools (MPEG LA, Access Advance, and Via LA), which adds complexity but at least offers central aggregation. That’s a key structural difference.
→ Low similarity
Bilateral Licensing:
Wi-Fi is dominated by bilateral licensing. Most implementers strike direct deals with SEP holders. HEVC does have bilateral deals, but pools play a much bigger role in its ecosystem.
→ Moderate similarity
Litigation Activity:
Wi-Fi has been a litigation-heavy space, especially with NPEs (non-practicing entities) and disputes over FRAND terms. HEVC has seen fewer high-profile lawsuits, with most disputes focused on pool non-joiners or enforcement in non-U.S. jurisdictions (e.g., Germany).
→ Moderate similarity
Number of SEP Owners:
Both Wi-Fi and HEVC have a large number of declared SEP holders, but Wi-Fi declarations are notoriously over-inclusive and poorly verified. HEVC’s SEP base is more curated through pool membership, though still fragmented.
→ Moderate similarity
Impact on Adoption:
Despite the lack of pools and high litigation, Wi-Fi adoption is near-universal, because device makers consider it essential. For HEVC, licensing complexity has clearly limited usage, especially in browsers and open ecosystems.
→ Low similarity
HEVC vs Cellular (4G/LTE/5G)
Similarity Score: 8/10
Patent Pools:
Cellular licensing is pool-optional, and most 4G/5G licensing happens bilaterally. That said, Avanci and past pools (e.g., Via Licensing for LTE) resemble HEVC’s model, albeit with one coordinated pool for auto (Avanci) vs multiple, competing pools for HEVC.
→ High similarity
Bilateral Licensing:
This is the core model for cellular—most revenue flows through one-on-one deals with major implementers (Apple, Samsung, etc.). HEVC has similar bilateral deals outside the pools, often necessary to achieve full coverage.
→ High similarity
Litigation Activity:
Litigation is common and international in cellular, with high-stakes battles over royalties, injunctions, and FRAND rates. While HEVC has had fewer headline cases, its enforcement model—particularly in Europe—mirrors cellular strategies (e.g., Access Advance suing in Germany).
→ High similarity
Number of SEP Owners:
Both ecosystems are defined by a diverse, global set of contributors. Cellular has more players and more total SEPs, but structurally, HEVC resembles it in having many contributors, some in pools, some not.
→ High similarity
Impact on Adoption:
In both cases, adoption depends on the economic incentives of the adopter, not just technical merit. Despite cost, both HEVC and cellular have seen strong adoption in mobile and consumer hardware—but not in open software ecosystems.
→ High similarity
Summary Table
| Factor | HEVC vs Wi-Fi | HEVC vs Cellular |
| Patent Pools | Low | High |
| Bilateral Licensing | Moderate | High |
| Litigation Activity | Moderate | High |
| SEP Ownership | Moderate | High |
| Adoption Impact | Low | High |
| Overall Similarity | 4/10 | 8/10 |
Conclusion:
HEVC’s licensing structure is much more similar to cellular technologies than to Wi-Fi. Both HEVC and cellular share complex licensing landscapes, international enforcement, and a mix of bilateral and (sometimes competing) pool-based models. Wi-Fi, on the other hand, has historically resisted patent pools and maintained broader adoption despite licensing friction, making its structure quite different.
Question 2: HEVC Commercial Success
Perplexity
HEVC (H.265) achieved significant commercial success despite its licensing complexities, driven by widespread hardware adoption and critical market demand for 4K/HDR content. By 2025, HEVC decoders were integrated into virtually all smart TVs, mobile devices (Android/iOS), and premium streaming hardware (e.g., Apple TVs, Roku, Fire TV)9, while encoding support became standard in cameras, GPUs (Nvidia, Intel), and broadcast equipment78. Key factors include:
- Hardware Adoption:
- HEVC decoding became ubiquitous in devices post-2017, with Intel’s 7th/8th Gen CPUs, Nvidia’s 10-series GPUs, and Apple’s A-series chips enabling 4K playback,
- By 2025, 100% of smart TVs and OTT devices supported HEVC9, driven by the 4K/HDR boom.
- Platform Adoption:
- Major streaming services, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, have adopted HEVC for UHD streaming, with 4K subscriptions surpassing HD by 2023.
- Despite limited browser support, HEVC dominated living-room streaming, where hardware decode was prioritized.
- Market Impact:
Conclusion: HEVC succeeded commercially as the de facto codec for 4K/HDR delivery, overcoming licensing fragmentation through broad hardware integration and streaming industry reliance on its efficiency.
Chat GPT
Assessment: Was HEVC a Commercial Success?
- Hardware Adoption (Primary Evaluation Metric)
HEVC was widely adopted across hardware platforms, including mobile devices, smart TVs, set-top boxes, game consoles, and streaming media players:
- Smartphones and tablets: Virtually all major SoCs from Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek, and Samsung support HEVC decoding, with many also supporting hardware encoding.
- Smart TVs and STBs: All major brands (Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV) integrated HEVC decoding, especially to support 4K and HDR content delivery.
- Cameras and professional equipment: HEVC is commonly used in consumer and professional cameras for 4K video capture and storage efficiency.
- Broad deployment in chipsets: HEVC support became baseline for silicon targeting video playback post-2015, particularly in devices that needed to support 4K.
In short, hardware vendors adopted HEVC broadly, despite licensing complexities, because it was essential for efficient 4K delivery and mobile video compression.
- Platform Adoption (Secondary Evaluation Metric)
Adoption on the software/platform side was more fragmented: - Browsers: HEVC was largely absent in open-source and cross-platform browsers like Chrome and Firefox due to licensing uncertainty. Safari on Apple devices supports HEVC natively.
- Streaming platforms: HEVC was used by Apple, Amazon, and others for 4K delivery, but many services (e.g., YouTube) avoided it in favor of VP9 or AV1 due to licensing costs or uncertainty.
- Content creation and delivery: Widely supported by professional encoding tools and streaming infrastructure (e.g., FFmpeg, Elemental, Harmonic), and commonly used for OTT delivery in 4K.
HEVC achieved significant but not universal platform adoption, particularly trailing in browser support and some web-first video ecosystems.
- Market Impact
HEVC enabled the transition to 4K, became the default codec for UHD Blu-ray, and was critical in early HDR workflows. It also saw strong uptake in mobile video for bandwidth efficiency. However, its complicated licensing and royalty structure did open the door for VP9 and later AV1 to gain footholds in software-driven environments.
Conclusion: HEVC was a commercial success in terms of hardware integration and professional workflows, despite limited browser support and fragmented platform adoption caused by licensing complexity.
Question 3: HEVC Publisher Adoption
Perplexity
HEVC adoption among non-premium publishers faced multiple barriers, with licensing uncertainty and status quo bias being the most impactful factors. Below is an analysis of each barrier’s influence (1–10 scale) and supporting evidence:
1. Licensing Uncertainty and Risk
Score: 9/10
HEVC’s fragmented licensing framework—with multiple patent pools (MPEG LA, Access Advance) and unaffiliated licensors (e.g., Nokia)—created legal and financial risks for publishers115. Non-premium publishers lacked the resources to navigate this complexity, fearing unpredictable royalties or lawsuits17. While pools later waived content royalties to spur adoption3, early uncertainty deterred smaller players2.
2. Lack of Monetizable Use Cases
Score: 8/10
HEVC’s value was tied to 4K/HDR delivery, which non-premium publishers rarely offered15. Bandwidth savings (~35–50% over AVC) provided limited incentive for SD/HD content, as CDN costs had already plummeted to $0.02/GB89. Without 4K as a “killer app,” HEVC’s benefits were nonessential19.
3. Lack of Browser Support
Score: 7/10
Until 2022, HEVC lacked native support in Chrome (used by ~65% of browsers) and faced DRM incompatibility718. Publishers relying on browser-based streaming avoided HEVC to maintain reach18. However, living-room devices (smart TVs, streaming boxes) mitigated this gap116.
4. Encoding Cost and Complexity
Score: 7/10
HEVC encoding costs were 8x higher than AVC (e.g., $0.336/min vs. $0.042/min on AWS)8. Smaller publishers lacked the budget for compute-intensive workflows, especially when bandwidth savings couldn’t offset expenses910.
5. Compatibility and Reach Constraints
Score: 6/10
While HEVC hardware penetration reached 96% in mobile/TVs by 20243, older devices (e.g., pre-2017 smartphones) and browsers still limited reach19. Publishers targeting broad audiences prioritized AVC for universal compatibility16.
6. Status Quo Bias / Institutional Inertia
Score: 8/10
Behavioral studies show organizations resist change unless forced by market shifts1220. AVC’s ubiquity in workflows, encoder compatibility, and lack of 4K mandates made switching to HEVC seem unnecessary914.
Additional Factors
- AV1’s Emergence: Royalty-free AV1 diverted attention, though adoption lagged due to hardware limitations15.
- Regulatory Avoidance: Some publishers sidestepped HEVC to avoid patent disputes entirely15.
Conclusion
HEVC’s adoption gap stemmed primarily from licensing risks and lack of 4K/HDR monetization, compounded by workflow inertia and browser limitations. Non-premium publishers rationally prioritized cost-effective, low-risk AVC over HEVC’s fragmented ecosystem.
Chat GPT
Here’s an objective analysis of why many non-premium content publishers did not adopt HEVC, rated across six commonly cited barriers, using a 1–10 scale for influence strength, with commentary for each. A summary of other possible contributing factors follows.
1. Licensing Uncertainty and Risk
Rating: 10
HEVC’s licensing environment is unusually complex, with multiple competing pools (MPEG LA, Access Advance, Via LA) and significant lack of clarity about who needs to pay and how much. This was especially concerning for small-to-medium publishers, who faced the risk of retroactive claims or surprise royalty demands. The absence of a universal license meant that even good-faith adopters could face gaps in coverage.
→ This was the single most chilling factor, particularly for publishers who couldn’t pass costs to consumers.
2. Lack of Monetizable Use Cases (e.g., no 4K/HDR)
Rating: 8
Most general-purpose publishers stream in 720p or 1080p SDR, where HEVC’s bitrate savings over AVC (~20–30%) rarely justify the licensing risk or workflow complexity. Without a clear ROI from better quality or cost savings, there was little business case to move beyond AVC for their content.
→ If there’s no revenue upside or perceptible quality gain, the incentive to switch disappears.
3. Lack of Browser Support
Rating: 7
HEVC is not supported in Chrome, Firefox, or Edge on most desktop platforms, due to licensing concerns from browser vendors. This makes it impractical for web-first publishers, who prioritize reach and compatibility. While workarounds exist (e.g., HLS fallback, software decode), they add development cost and increase complexity.
→ A major barrier in browser-centric workflows, but less of a concern for mobile apps or OTT platforms.
4. Encoding Cost and Complexity
Rating: 5
HEVC encoding is computationally more demanding than AVC, especially for live use cases. While commercial encoders and hardware acceleration have improved over time, smaller publishers often rely on open-source tools (e.g., x264) or third-party platforms that default to AVC.
→ Relevant, but generally not a deal-breaker unless operating at scale or doing live encoding.
5. Compatibility and Reach Constraints
Rating: 6
While HEVC has broad hardware support, compatibility gaps persist in older devices, desktop environments, and enterprise contexts (e.g., Windows PCs without HEVC extensions). This increases the need for fallback workflows, which add operational complexity and cost.
→ Important, but increasingly mitigated by device churn and hybrid encoding ladders.
6. Status Quo Bias / Institutional Inertia
Rating: 4
AVC is ubiquitous, reliable, and well-understood, with years of tooling, automation, and QA around it. Many publishers simply stuck with what worked, especially in the absence of market pressure to upgrade.
→ A contributing factor, but more a symptom of the other issues than a root cause.
Other Contributing Factors
- Unclear licensing liability for user-generated content (UGC): For platforms that host or redistribute third-party uploads, licensing exposure could be ambiguous, discouraging adoption.
- Lack of CDN support for HEVC until recently: Early on, some CDNs charged more or required special arrangements for HEVC delivery, creating friction.
- Emergence of AV1 as a “free” alternative: Even though AV1 adoption was limited early on, its promise of royalty-free use may have led some to wait and see.
Summary Table
| Barrier | Rating (1–10) | Commentary |
| Licensing uncertainty and risk | 10 | The largest deterrent, especially for smaller or ad-supported publishers. |
| Lack of monetizable use cases | 8 | No compelling economic reason to switch at 1080p and below. |
| Lack of browser support | 7 | Major blocker for browser-centric publishers. |
| Encoding cost and complexity | 5 | A factor, but becoming less relevant over time. |
| Compatibility and reach constraints | 6 | Still meaningful in mixed-device environments. |
| Status quo bias / institutional inertia | 4 | Real, but secondary to more structural barriers. |
Conclusion:
The primary reasons general-purpose publishers avoided HEVC were licensing uncertainty, weak economic incentives for non-4K content, and limited browser support. Technical challenges and inertia played secondary roles.
