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Consider this beta version 0.9 of my algorithmic view of how codec markets are penetrated. There are lots of assumptions that I’ve tried to document in the readme tab of the Excel file you can download below. I assume there will be errors in both math and assumptions. If you find one, please contact me at jan.ozer@streaminglearningcenter.com and let me know.  …

While visiting Prague before IBC 2026, I sat down with Michal Hošna, a Media Systems Architect at CDN77. We discussed CDN77’s recent decision to purchase a few thousand NETINT Quadra T1U transcoders for large-scale live production, primarily for social media clients that run tens of thousands of live streams in parallel. You can watch the interview on YouTube here and …

If you’re producing solely H.264-encoded video, optimizing your encodes can save you bandwidth costs and deliver a higher quality experience to your viewers. If you’re considering adding HEVC or AV1 to the mix, you have another reason. Before you attempt to compute the bandwidth savings and quality improvements these codecs deliver, you should know just how much quality and bitrate …

The IETF’s MoQ Transport draft is on its 21th version. According to Michal Hošna of CDN77, who I interviewed in Prague before IBC 2026, the working group has been predicting completion “in six months” for two years. He now hopes for something final by the end of this year. CDN77 expects to launch a public MoQ offering “in a couple …

The thing about codec adoption is that years of hard work and development must occur before a single stream gets distributed by an independent publisher. The bottleneck is almost always the decode side, accumulating sufficient compatible players to make the new codec economically viable. One study, titled Spotlight on HEVC: The codec of choice for the video streaming industry, sponsored …

On August 13, 2026, the 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court issued a 67-page FRAND Guidelines. Although multiple outlets have reported on them, I have not located a public copy of the Guidelines themselves, though I have requested one. In the Guidelines, the court estimated an top-down monthly per-subscriber royalty of €0.63 for a standard Netflix subscription and …

Each year, I write about Bitmovin’s Video Developer Report because it’s one of the few recurring data points available to the streaming industry. It reports survey-based usage and planned usage for codecs, protocols, encoding, player development, QoE, advertising, CDN strategy, and more. I inevitably download it multiple times each year for referencing in some article or consulting project. This year’s …

The 7th Civil Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court just published detailed FRAND guidelines addressing standard-essential patent licensing. The guidelines include an analysis of how the court might calculate video codec royalties for streaming services, with Netflix and Disney+ as examples. This was not a decision involving either company. In fact, the court noted that it has not yet …

Microsoft recently open-sourced the Machine Learning Video Codec (MLVC) under the MIT License, publishing the codebase and model weights on GitHub, along with a technical announcement on the Microsoft Tech Community blog. The research paper, “MLVC: A Multi-platform Learned Video Codec for Real-World Deployment,” details the underlying architecture and makes this bold claim.  MLVC is the first neural video codec to …

Executive Summary The H.264 codec has proven remarkably durable, but demand for 4K efficiency, HDR compatibility, and small-screen/low-bitrate quality makes adopting advanced codecs like VP9, HEVC, AV1, and VVC inevitable for most services. However, between 2022 and 2026, the economics of streaming codecs have changed materially. Tier‑1 OTT services that once paid $100K in H.264 content royalties may now pay …