The ratification of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard...

in a blog post. The new codec, which will use half the bit rate of H.264/MPEG-4, will “considerably ease the burden on global networks where, by some estimates, video accounts for more than half of bandwidth use,” Gray said. While MPEG-2 enabled DVDs and the first digital broadcasts, its low compression efficiency “made HD difficult,” resulting in adoption limited to Australia, Korea, Japan and the U.S., Gray said. MPEG-4, meanwhile, was initially hailed for making HD broadcasting economical, particularly in “spectrum-challenged Europe” and then to all new digital broadcast deployments, Gray said. But MPEG-4’s most significant impact turned out to be Internet video, “not broadcast at all,” Gray said. As the compression format behind Netflix, YouTube and other streaming services, MPEG-4 “unlocked video from the TV screen,” he said. “It is tempting to imagine” that HEVC will unlock a new era of 4K x 2K broadcasting, Gray said, but “it is also likely that governments will seize the opportunity to sell some more radio spectrum by migrating terrestrial TV to HEVC,” he said. That idea has already been proposed in France, and budget deficit reduction is likely to be a political issue in several countries, he said. Similar to MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 before it, HEVC’s biggest contribution may be in “perfecting the bleeding edge of the previous codec’s application,” Gray said. The fact that tablet and smartphone displays are now HD-capable furthers the need for a broader reach for HD, he said. In the end, HEVC’s main effect “will likely be ubiquitous HD, not 4K x 2K,” Gray said. “The days of your entire HD video library in your pocket are not far away."