What advantages allowed MPEG-4 AVC to conquer the market?

By Dev Info Club
What advantages allowed MPEG-4 AVC to conquer the market?

MPEG-4 AVC, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or H.264, is the result of the work of the Joint Video Signals Group (JVT), a joint project between the ITU Video Coding Experts Group (ITU-T) and the ISO / IEC (ISO / IEC). The first specification of the standard appeared in 2003.

AVC is now one of the most widely used video codecs for streaming and recording. It is used in various fields: in digital broadcasting DVB / ATSC, in cable TV services, in video conferencing, in video surveillance, for recording on Blu-ray discs and other areas of digital video.
So what are the benefits of AVC?

  • Low bitrate with high quality. This is the most important criterion for all operators. Instead of one channel in MPEG-2, you can fit two in AVC. This significantly reduces the cost of broadcasting and allows you to broadcast in acceptable quality when bandwidth is limited.
  • Error tolerance, which allows the image to be reproduced despite errors in data transmission over various networks.
  • Loyal licensing.
  • Low implementation cost and wide range of supporting devices. This point follows from the previous one: thanks to simple licensing, a large number of device manufacturers have implemented support for the standard. This provided better interoperability between AVC-based solutions and looked commercially attractive.

Today there are more advanced coding standards on the market: HEVC, AV1, VP9, ​​VVC. They provide more efficient compression than AVC, but are sometimes difficult to integrate and use. HEVC was seen as the successor to AVC, but the pace of its adoption has slowed a lot due to the limited distribution of 4K and a complicated licensing mechanism.

There will be several dominant players in the niche in the future. For example, AV1 and VP9 could solidify their position as the “codec of choice” for streaming media distribution, while AVC and HEVC remain the primary codecs for broadcasting. However, every broadcast or pay-TV operator has a unique infrastructure, so there is hardly ever one clear winner among the codecs.

Of course, broadcasters want to use more advanced codecs. Still, a huge number of people still consume SD and HD content, so it is necessary to invest in updating old codecs so that they still meet the needs of the audience in terms of content quality. AVC has enough parameters to cover all kinds of end devices.

It has been a long time since the appearance of AVC, but it still has not lost its relevance and is considered the “gold” standard in broadcasting and OTT.