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dipulb3 · 5 years ago

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Sony XBR-X900H TV review: Excellent picture now, ready for the future

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Sony XBR-X900H TV review: Excellent picture now, ready for the future

The XBR-X900H is the best-performing midpriced Sony TV I’ve tested in years, with excellent contrast and brightness, accurate color and plenty of punch with HDR. Add to that a solid smart TV system, sleek styling and cutting-edge features and you’ve got a great television for anyone who values Sony’s brand but doesn’t want to pony up for one of its OLED TVs.

Excellent overall image quality

Best-in-class connectivity

Available in an 85-inch size

More affordable than equivalent Samsung

Don’t Like

More expensive than competing TVs with similar picture quality

The key to this TV’s image quality, as with all LCD-based sets that perform well in my side-by-side tests, is well implemented full-array local dimming. It improves black levels and contrast by illuminating different areas of the screen separately as needed. In some crucial ways, such as reducing stray illumination with HDR, the X900H beat the similarly equipped TCL 6-Series in those tests, but in other ways the TCL won out, with superior brightness and contrast overall. The Sony also costs more than the TCL, so it’s not my top recommendation for people who want the best image quality for the money.

There are lots of good reasons to choose the Sony X900H instead, however. The first is superior connectivity: Unlike the TCL, it will be compatible with the highest-quality 4K/120Hz video from the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, and unlike any TV at this price it also has a built-in Next Gen TV tuner for upcoming ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. The Sony is also available in a massive 85-inch size, something not offered by TCL or Hisense. And maybe Sony’s brand cachet is important to you — but you don’t want to throw down even more for a FALD-equipped Samsung, the cheapest of which (the Q80T) costs hundreds more than the X900H.

Even better, Sony recently dropped the price of the 65-inch size to $1,000, just $100 more than the TCL. If that size, or any of the other reasons above appeal to you, the X900H should be on your short list.

A couple of subtle touches separate the X900H from other big-screen, thin-frame TVs available today. There’s a line of silver metallic finishing around the extreme edge on all four sides, matching the silver-colored stand legs. Those legs are thinner than usual but feel plenty solid, and I appreciated that they’re metal and not plastic.

A look around the sides finds holes for Sony’s unusual speaker array, and the bottom has bass ports. Both are invisible from the standard seating position but contribute to improved sound, according to Sony. I don’t test audio quality for CNET TV reviews, but don’t expect miracles here — any decent soundbar will likely outperform the X900H’s built-in audio by a mile.

The remote is old-school Sony: way too many buttons, most of which you’ll never use. I prefer the sleeker, simpler clickers of Samsung and Roku, as well as the motion-infused wands of LG.

David Katzmaier/CNET

Android TV: No Google TV yet, but still solid

Google recently debuted a new smart TV system called Google TV, but currently it’s only available in the new Chromecast and Google hasn’t said when (or if) other Google-powered devices like the X900H will get the upgrade. Meanwhile the current version, called Android TV, still performs well. Apps launched quickly, I zipped around thumbnails and navigation screens with ease, and response times in general were on par with Roku, Samsung and LG TVs.

Only Roku has as many apps as Android TV, and it lacks the voice power of Google Assistant. Roku’s search is better, however. LG has Assistant, as well as Alexa, but its app selection falls short. The X900H’s array of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos apps is solid too: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Vudu and Fandango Now support both, Google Play Movies supports Vision (but not Atmos) and Tidal supports Atmos.

David Katmaier/CNET

Android TV’s menus are perfectly usable, if not quite as evolved as Google TV. The home page is clean and simple, with favorite apps grouped at the top for easy access in a customizable bar and clear routes to get more apps, search and more. New for 2020, you can customize the input menu, and the TV settings menus have clear explanations of the effects of different adjustments, complete with illustrations.

I did experience some problems. There’s quite a few annoying pop-ups and notifications on the home page. You can’t customize the top section or what appears in each row, so a screen mostly full of clutter you don’t care about is inevitable. Wi-Fi was also unstable on my review sample. A couple of times I was greeted with a pop-up alert saying Wi-Fi was disconnected. The only way I could turn it back on was to unplug the TV and plug it back in. I asked Sony about the issue and a spokesperson told me it plans to issue a software update to deal with the issue — no word yet on timing.

David Katzmaier/CNET

Assistant on TVs works well. Commands are transcribed on-screen, along with suggestions for follow-up commands. The X900H lacks the far-field mic found on last year’s version, which is a bummer, but talking into the remote worked fine. I was able to launch apps, perform searches, mute and change volume, tell it to “play cat videos on YouTube,” get the weather, set timers and so on.

It wasn’t without typical Google Assistant wonkiness however. Once I asked, “What’s the latest news?” and an account login page appeared, and when I clicked through a YouTube channel failed to load, complete with a “Something went wrong” popup, a blank screen and a spinning progress indicator.

You can link the Sony TV with Google Nest Home or Amazon Alexa speakers for hands-free action. The X900H lets you use your phone to cast apps via its built-in Google Cast functionality, which works just like a Chromecast, and also supports Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit compatibility. AirPlay 2 lets the TV function as a display for TV shows, movies, music, photos and web pages with an iPhone, iPad or Mac as the controller. Unlike many other TVs, however, this Sony lacks the full Apple TV app.

Key features

Display technology LED LCD LED backlight Full array with local dimming Resolution 4K HDR compatible HDR10 and Dolby Vision Smart TV Android TV Remote Voice

The best picture-enhancing extra on the X900H is full-array local dimming. Unlike Vizio, Hisense or TCL, Sony doesn’t disclose the number of dimming zones on its TVs, and while more zones generally equate to better performance, that’s not always the case.

Other picture-centric extras include a native 120Hz refresh rate, a notable improvement on paper over the fake 120Hz refresh rates (they’re actually 60Hz native) found on some TVs. The X-Motion Clarity mode that debuted in 2018 is also on board. It boosts motion resolution by applying black frame insertion only where it’s needed on the screen, which is said to eliminate the flicker and dimness evinced by similar modes in past sets. See the picture quality section for more.

Unlike Samsung, TCL and Vizio, Sony doesn’t use quantum dots, so its HDR color gamut isn’t as wide. In addition to standard HDR10, the X900H supports the Dolby Vision HDR format, unlike Samsung.

David Katzmaier/CNET

4x HDMI inputs

3x USB ports

Composite video input

Ethernet (LAN) port

Optical digital audio output

1x headphone/subwoofer audio output

1x RF (antenna) input

RS-232 port (minijack)

The X900H has some of the most capable inputs of any 4K TV. It supports numerous HDMI 2.1 features, namely enhanced audio return channel (aka eARC), automatic low latency mode (ALLM, or auto game mode) and variable refresh rate. A firmware update will allow its HDMI inputs to accept 4K resolution at 120 frames per second, but Sony couldn’t tell me exactly when it would arrive. That feature sets it apart from many 2020 TVs like the TCL 6-Series, especially for gamers who want to take advantage of high frame rates from an Xbox Series X or Sony PlayStation 5.

It’s also the only non-8K TV to feature a built-in ATSC 3.0 over-the-air tuner, which allows the X900H to receive NextGen TV broadcasts. Those are still only available in a tiny number of markets so I didn’t get the chance to check out this feature, but it’s nice to know that once the broadcasts become more widespread, Sony X900H owners won’t have to connect an external tuner box to watch.

Read more: Next Gen TV is free 4K TV with an antenna, and it’s coming this year

Unlike many of Samsung’s sets, the Sony actually has an analog video input, albeit composite-only, and I also appreciate having a headphone jack.

Click the image above for picture settings and HDR notes.

David Katzmaier/CNET

Picture quality comparisons

The Sony X900H is an excellent performer overall, with a pleasing, balanced image that still manages to deliver plenty of pop and contrast. It can’t quite match the black levels and light output of some LCDs I’ve tested — most recently from TCL and Hisense — but still comes pretty close. Meanwhile other areas of image quality, namely color accuracy and shadow detail, were superior to those TVs.

Click the image at the right to see the picture settings used in the review and to read more about how this TV’s picture controls worked during calibration.

Dim lighting: Dark movie scenes played in a dark room are the most challenging kind of content for LCD-based TVs and while the Sony looked excellent in my side-by-side tests, it wasn’t quite as good as the TCL 6-Series or the Hisense at maintaining that crucial darkness. Letterbox bars in mid-dark scenes, such as the general’s speech in the bunker at the beginning of 1917, provided one example. The other two TVs were both able to preserve a blacker color of “black” in the bars and other dark areas, like the soldiers’ silhouettes, which made them look a bit more realistic than the X900H. The difference was minor overall, however, and even less noticeable in other scenes with brighter lighting.

On the other hand, the Sony preserved details in shadows most consistently among the three TVs, for example in the super dark scene with the soldier waking up (1:06:38), and also controlled blooming and stray illumination very well. Again, the differences with SDR were relatively minor and all three TVs looked excellent.

Bright lighting: The X900H can get exceedingly bright, although it didn’t measure quite as bright as some other sets I’ve tested recently.

Light output in nits

TV Brightest (SDR) Accurate color (SDR) Brightest (HDR) Accurate color (HDR) Vizio PX65-G1 (2019) 1,990 1,120 2,908 2,106 TCL 65Q825 1,653 904 1,818 982 TCL 65R635 1,114 792 1,292 1,102 Sony XBR-65X900H 841 673 989 795 Vizio M658-G1 (2019) 633 400 608 531 LG OLED65CX 377 290 690 634

The “accurate” numbers above were measured with the Sony’s Xtended Dynamic Range setting in the High setting in the Custom picture mode, which is a great choice for bright rooms where you still want an accurate image. As usual, the brightest setting, Vivid, is incredibly inaccurate.

Compared to the others, the Sony’s screen finish was visibly superior at preserving contrast and black levels in a bright room, but it did a somewhat worse job of dimming bright reflections. Overall I preferred the Sony’s bright-room image to that of the others in most scenes.

Color accuracy: Despite its lack of quantum dots I’ve come to expect excellent color from Sony and the X900H is no exception. Its Custom and Cinema modes were very similar prior to calibration although both skewed slightly blue; afterward they were nearly perfect. Watching program material bright scenes, like the fields, woods and uniforms in Chapter 8 of 1917, looked the most pleasing and natural of the three TVs, outdoing the apparent saturation of the TCL in my comparison.

Video processing: The X900H had no issues delivering proper 1080p/24 cadence with its Motionflow controls in the Off position, which is probably the best for film purists. Meanwhile the Auto setting introduced the buttery smoothness of the soap opera effect. Then there’s the Custom setting, which has adjustable Smoothness and Clearness.

A Smoothness setting above 1 introduces significant SOE, while 0 turns it off. I actually didn’t mind the slight smoothing that the 1 setting introduces (some purists might), but its effect on motion resolution was really slight, so I’d probably stick with 0. The Clearness setting ramps up black frame insertion to improve motion resolution, but it doesn’t have any effect (aside from dimming the image) unless you’ve got Smoothness at 2 or higher. In other words there’s no way to get the best of both worlds — high motion resolution and no SOE — with one setting.

The X900H measured the best (lowest) input lag of any Sony TV yet, at around 15 milliseconds in Game mode for both 1080p and 4K HDR — an improvement of 4ms compared to last year’s X950G. In the Custom mode, meanwhile, I measured 91ms with both resolutions.

Uniformity: The X900H sample I tested was very good in this category, with few visible variations across the screen in static or moving test patterns or program material, such as a hockey match. Compared to the TCL and the Hisense, the Sony lost black level fidelity and contrast from off-angle more severely as I moved away from the sweet spot in the center of the screen. On the other hand, it preserved color better than the other two.

HDR and 4K video: The X900H is a suburb HDR performer overall. I started my comparison with my reference video, the montage from the Spears and Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark, and the Sony held its own nicely compared to the TCL and the Hisense, although it couldn’t quite match either one for contrast. Its biggest challenge, as expected, came during the difficult bright-on-black sections, for example the honey dripper at 2:50. Both of the others delivered deeper black levels that gave the image more pop and contrast, as well as showing less blooming and stray illumination.

In brighter, more natural shots like the snowy mountains and the hot springs, the Sony narrowed the gap, although brightness in highlights and in larger bright areas like clouds and snow lagged the TCL slightly and the Hisense even more. Color accuracy was excellent, a bit better than the TCL and significantly better than the Hisense, with a balanced yet vibrant look to the flowers and insects. The Sony also preserved detail in very bright areas better than the Hisense.

Turning back to 1917 in 4K HDR, the Sony again competed well and in some scenes looked the most balanced and pleasing of the three. The general’s bunker scene (6:55) was one example: the TCL 635 showed darker black levels but worse blooming and stray illumination, and while the Hisense was brighter in highlights its color looked the least realistic and it also showed blooming. Again the Sony preserved shadow detail the best among the three as well.

In brighter scenes the Sony again trailed the other two at delivering that trademark HDR blast of light, for example in the skies above the soldiers as they walk quickly through the trenches. The TCL and the Sony were relatively close, however, and tough to differentiate without measuring their bright areas directly, while the Hisense was visibly brighter than both. On the other hand, as I saw with the 4K Benchmark, colors on both the TCL and Sony looked more accurate and natural than on the Hisense.

4K HDR gaming: For this test I played The Last of Us Part 2 on a PS4 Pro in the TVs’ various Game modes: Game mode on the Sony and Gaming HDR (aka THX-certified Game Mode) for the 635 (I didn’t include the Hisense in this test).

When you’re crawling around a dark building hunting zombies, shadow detail is more important than black level and contrast, because it allows you to peer into dark recesses to spot enemies. By that measure the Sony was better than the 635, delivering every ounce of detail in the darkest shadows while the 635 was a bit more shrouded. That said, the TCL won for black levels, contrast and punch in the same (default) game settings. With many games, including The Last of Us Part 2, you can adjust gamma and shadow detail to taste (and you should).

Moving out into the day-lit Seattle streets, the 635 again looked best overall thanks to superior contrast, which as usual helped colors pop. The Sony still looked great, however, and differences would be tough to discern outside of a side-by-side comparison.

Geek Box

Test Result Score Black luminance (0%) 0.010 Good Peak white luminance (SDR) 841 Good Avg. gamma (10-100%) 2.15 Good Avg. grayscale error (10-100%) 1.07 Good Dark gray error (30%) 0.99 Good Bright gray error (80%) 1.19 Good Avg. color checker error 1.80 Good Avg. saturation sweeps error 1.55 Good Avg. color error 2.37 Good Red error 2.82 Good Green error 2.72 Good Blue error 2.23 Good Cyan error 2.26 Good Magenta error 2.34 Good Yellow error 1.83 Good 1080p/24 Cadence (IAL) Pass Good Motion resolution (max) 1200 Good Motion resolution (dejudder off) 400 Poor Input lag (Game mode) 15.50 Good HDR10 Black luminance (0%) 0.006 Good Peak white luminance (10% win) 989 Average Gamut % UHDA/P3 (CIE 1976) 92.59 Average ColorMatch HDR error 3.57 Average Avg. color checker error 4.99 Average Input lag (Game mode, 4K HDR) 15.23 Good

Sony XBR-65X900H CNET review calibration results by David Katzmaier on Scribd

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soukacatv · 6 years ago

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HEVC (H.265): What is it and Why Should You Care? | Soukacatv.com

What is HEVC (H.265)?

How does HEVC (H.265) work?

The impending format war: HEVC (H.265) vs. VP9 vs. AV1.

Who will win out in the end?

You may have heard a lot about HEVC (H.265) recently. Apple integrated this next-generation codec into MacOS High Sierra, and professional NLEs FCP X and Premiere Pro recently were updated to support it as well. And other hardware and software vendors keep announcing new support almost every month.

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This increasingly loud fanfare should come as no surprise to anyone in the video industry. HEVC (H.265) promises to deliver high-quality 4k video that is up to 75% smaller than before, and paves the way to an even more ambitious 8k HDR future. This sort of performance is what we dream about as video professionals, and HEVC (H.265) could radically simplify and improve the jump to ultra-high definition content production.

If HEVC (H.265) takes off, it will shape the industry for years to come. But there is growing competition in the realm of futuristic codecs. Challengers like VP9 and AV1 have powerful allies in the fight for our screens. So it’s time to sit down and take a good look at HEVC (H.265) , and discover how it can benefit your video workflows.

What is HEVC(H.265)?

In short, HEVC (H.265) is the successor to the H.264 codec. If you’ve read our definitive guide to codecs, you should already be familiar with H.264. HEVC (H.265) was specifically created to provide UHD HDR deliverables with wider color gamut’s, rather than just the HD SDR Rec.709 deliverables of H.264.

The choice to use any particular codec is always partly informed by what particular hardware is available. With CPUs in the last decade or so becoming ever more powerful, cheaper, and more abundant, there has been an industry-wide trend to trade storage space on hard drives for computation via CPUs.

HEVC (H.265) is just the latest continuation of the trend in trading storage for computation. In years past, digital intermediates like ProRes or DNxHR would eventually be converted to H.264 for web or broadcast. HEVC (H.265) , on the other hand, requires even less storage space than H.264, yet it requires even more CPU power.

What this means is that the networks that we already use to deliver our HD SDR Rec. 709 video will be able to deliver more data into our video: higher dynamic range, wider color gamuts, and larger resolutions. The infrastructure won’t immediately require more bandwidth. The more powerful CPUs that live in our new smart TVs, tablets, and phones can decode more data out of the networks without requiring more bandwidth, all else being equal.

Claims about being able to more efficiently compress data into cutting-edge video codecs are exciting—but should you believe all the hype about equivalent quality?

An initial working group study that took place from 2013 to 2016 found that HEVC (H.265) “clearly exhibited a substantial improvement in compression performance, as compared to AVC [H.264].” The study tested two different kinds of images: “natural” content and “synthetic” content. The “natural” content consisted of real-world images captured by a camera, and the “synthetic” content was from Sintel, a test movie created with the 3D graphics application Blender. The study found that HEVC (H.265) reduced the bit rate of natural content by 51% to 74%, and synthetic content by 75%, with no loss of perceptible video quality.

How does HEVC (H.265) work?

What’s under the hood that magically allows for lower data rates with equivalent visual quality? The answers are extremely technical, and if you are so inclined, you can check out the slides from Vivienne Sze of MIT and Madhukar Budagavi from Samsung or the July 2012 issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine. But for video professionals, here is a quick breakdown of HEVC (H.265) ’s compression methods.

From Macroblocks to CTUs

Whereas H.264 would break an image down into squares of pixels called “macroblocks,” HEVC (H.265) breaks down the images into “Coding Tree Units” (CTUs) that can be up to 64×64 pixels. Each macroblock within H.264 can have only interframe or intraframe prediction, but not both.

Interframe compression is when pixels are borrowed from adjacent frames in a video, and intraframe compression is when pixels are borrowed from within the same video frame.

In HEVC (H.265) , CTUs actually use a combination of inter- and intraframe compression. This means that there are more methods of preserving detail in complex images.

You may have heard the term “macroblocking” to refer to artefacts—those nasty compression artifacts when the 16×16 squares can’t reproduce the fine details of a particular texture, like smooth gradients in clear skies or blocky clouds with a wide variety of luminance. In contrast to H.264’s macroblocks, HEVC (H.265) ’s CTUs don’t even need to be squares, so there’s much more flexibility in how different parts of the image are compressed.

From 8 to 35 intra prediction modes

In H.264 intraframe compression, there are only eight ways for each block to borrow nearby pixels. With additional computational complexity, HEVC can use up to 35 different methods to borrow nearby pixels.

New kinds of filtering

HEVC (H.265) also uses new kinds of filtering to eliminate would-be artefacts, such as sample adaptive offset (SAO) and adaptive loop filtering (ALF). These filtering methods provide a big improvement over what is available for h.264.

HEVC (H.265) in post-production today?

All these technical capabilities are impressive, and you might want to start using HEVC (H.265) for all your projects immediately.

Unfortunately, HEVC (H.265) doesn’t yet have universal support for encoding and decoding in every post-production app, so you might need to practice some patience before you can benefit from its impressive technical capabilities. However, updates are steadily rolling out that enable HEVC (H.265) support.

Apple FCP X: Support for HEVC (H.265) first appeared in Final Cut Pro X 10.4, which was released back in December 2017, but requires macOS High Sierra.

Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro supports the import of HEVC (H.265) media with resolutions up to 8192×4320, and can export to 720p, 1080p, 4K, and 8K, at 8-bit or 10-bit.

Avid Media Composer: As of this writing, HEVC (H.265) has not yet been supported in Media Composer. If presented with it, Avid MC users will need to convert to DNxHD.

Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve: As of April 2016, HEVC (H.265) can only be decoded on macOS.

Who wants HEVC (H.265) ?

The Broadcast Television Industry

One of the big drivers of HEVC (H.265) will be the transition to ATSC (Advanced Television System Committee) 3.0—the next collection of technical standards for how television stations will broadcast out to viewers. Since the very outset of ATSC 3.0 planning, ATSC selected HEVC (H.265) as the core codec. ATSC 3.0-compliant networks can broadcast 4K now. Later, if and when there’s a demand for 8K, similar HEVC (H.265) pipelines will let broadcasters comfortably upgrade without much difficulty.

There are several indications that HEVC (H.265) could take off in a big way for broadcast. Over 2 billion devices already support it, so producers and networks have a big incentive to make content for that user base. Several high-profile deployments have showcased HEVC (H.265) ’s technical feasibility, like the 2016 World Series and the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games.

Apple

To date, Apple has provided a few different tools for HEVC (H.265) encoding. Devices running iOS 11 can already handle 8-bit HEVC (H.265) content, so long as the device contains at least an A10 Fusion chip. For newer macOS devices, Apple supports 8-bit HEVC (H.265) hardware encoding, and the High Sierra update introduced 10-bit HEVC (H.265) software encoding.

Apple supports HEVC (H.265) in one form or another across their entire product line, so it’s quite possible to deliver HEVC (H.265) content to hundreds of millions of users almost anywhere.

Microsoft

It should be no surprise that Microsoft has mirrored Apple in HEVC (H.265) adoption, though their support has been less consistent. Originally, HEVC (H.265) was natively supported inside of Windows 10. But, Microsoft dropped native HEVC (H.265) integration with the 2017 Fall Creators Update, and now requires downloading and installing a free Windows 10 extension.

In either case, Windows 10 should have no problem handling HEVC (H.265) content, which pushes the codec’s reach to over 700 million more mobile and desktop devices.

Living Room Companions

Of course, the living room is still a major media consumption environment, and HEVC (H.265) has a growing presence there. The heavy support of HEVC (H.265) by broadcasters means that TV manufacturers have a huge reason to get behind the codec. Samsung, Sony, and LG have all started shipping TVs that natively decode HEVC (H.265) , enabling much smoother live 4k content than before. And video-on-demand apps are showing some HEVC (H.265) support too. Netflix has been playing around with x265 (an open-source HEVC encoder), Amazon Prime has adopted the codec, and Hulu began UHD streaming with HEVC (H.265) as well.

This broad support for HEVC (H.265) has already captured a huge portion of the global media consumption market. However, rivals are fighting back.

The Format Wars

A primer on HEVC (H.265) wouldn’t be complete without the necessary context that HEVC (H.265) is but one challenger in the next-generation format war. HEVC (H.265) has a good head-start over the competition but the jury is definitely still out.

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is the body that oversaw the development of HEVC (H.265) . They’re also the ones who oversaw development of MPEG-2, MP3, and H.264 in years past. Because codec development is a big, complicated, sprawling process, all the assorted businesses and organizations that help develop such formats typically join patent pools to recuperate the costs of development.

The patent pools are able to license the usage of the codecs. Device manufacturers and software developers pay license fees to use the codecs in their products. The cost of this licensing is then incorporated into the price of the hardware or software.

This business model has worked for decades, but HEVC (H.265) hasn’t yet taken root like H.264 did because now HEVC (H.265) faces a worthy competitor: VP9.

VP9

YouTube (owned by Google) was never fully satisfied with the licensing agreement for H.264, and back in 2010 Google acquired a video compression company that owned VP8, a comparable alternative to H.264. YouTube then open-sourced VP8 in the WebM container, unleashing into the world an alternative to H.264 without any licensing fees.

By 2015, it was clear that YouTube didn’t want to license HEVC (H.265) , and didn’t bother with it. Instead, they adopted VP9. VP9 is to VP8 as HEVC is to H.264.

AV1

In 2015, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix created the Alliance for Open Media (AOM). In 2016, AMD, ARM and NVIDIA joined AOM and AOM announced the new codec in development, now known as AV1. Bitmovin, the co-creator of the MPEG-DASH video streaming standard, joined AOM in 2017. Hulu followed, along with Facebook.

In July 2017, it was looking like Apple was going to be the main backer of HEVC (H.265) , which could have fueled a long and wasteful format war, but in a surprise twist, Apple quietly joined AOM this past January as a founding member. The AOM website was updated to include Apple on their list, without any kind of press release, and Apple refused to respond to a request for comment. What this means for the future of HEVC (H.265) is anyone’s guess, but since most major players are members of AOM, it’s difficult to understand why they would want to pay the licensing costs for HEVC (H.265).

In spite of AV1’s significant backing, HEVC (H.265) remains a strong contender largely because of its significant head-start. HEVC (H.265) now has wide support in software and hardware, and AV1 is starting from scratch. Because of the significant processing power required to decode either of these two new codecs, it is impractical to expect devices to play them back unless they have been specifically designed to support hardware decoding. While most software can be updated reasonably quickly to support new codecs, hardware is another story.

Leonardo Chiariglione, the founder and chairman of MPEG, worries that AOM won’t be able to fund research and development as well as MPEG would, and the fast pace of innovation we’ve seen for 30 years from MPEG is about to slow down.

Whither HEVC (H.265)?

Though many consumer devices, NLEs, and operating systems support HEVC (H.265), the streaming industry is poised to adopt AV1. HEVC (H.265) may be useful as a broadcast deliverable for ATSC 3.0 television networks, but Google, Amazon, Apple, Hulu and Netflix all seem like they’re going to swing toward mass adoption of AV1. On March 28 of this year, just in time for the NAB 2018, the AV1 1.0 spec was released. It’s just a 1.0 spec, so while we wait for the industry to start shipping products to encode and decode AV1, HEVC (H.265) could still take off. (YouTube recently posted an AV1 beta launch playlist. By downloading a beta of Chrome 70 and tweaking a setting on YouTube, you can actually see YouTube’s implementation of the AV1 codec in action.)

In fact, we may very well see a future where broadcast TV defaults to HEVC (H.265) while streaming media defaults to AV1, and this isn’t just because of the disagreement over licensing. Early results show that AV1 will be 100x slower at live media encoding than HEVC (H.265). This makes AV1 technically unsuitable for wide swaths of broadcast 4k content, but isn’t much of an issue for streaming companies who deal with relatively little live content.

As you can see, a lot has been invested in the development of these technologies, and the ability to save a significant amount in licensing fees makes open source codecs like AV1 compelling. But, the speed and adoption of HEVC (H.265) can’t be ignored. Your guess is as good as ours as to which will ultimately win.

Have you already adopted HEVC (H.265)? Share your thoughts with the community, and let us know how it has changed your workflow.

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Source: https://blog.frame.io/2018/09/24/hevc-format-wars/

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electronalytics · 2 years ago

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soukacatv · 6 years ago

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What is HEVC (H.265)?

How does HEVC (H.265) work?

The impending format war: HEVC (H.265) vs. VP9 vs. AV1.

Who will win out in the end?

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What is HEVC(H.265)?

Claims about being able to more efficiently compress data into cutting-edge video codecs are exciting—but should you believe all the hype about equivalent quality?

How does HEVC (H.265) work?

From Macroblocks to CTUs

Interframe compression is when pixels are borrowed from adjacent frames in a video, and intraframe compression is when pixels are borrowed from within the same video frame.

In HEVC (H.265) , CTUs actually use a combination of inter- and intraframe compression. This means that there are more methods of preserving detail in complex images.

From 8 to 35 intra prediction modes

New kinds of filtering

HEVC (H.265) in post-production today?

All these technical capabilities are impressive, and you might want to start using HEVC (H.265) for all your projects immediately.

Apple FCP X: Support for HEVC (H.265) first appeared in Final Cut Pro X 10.4, which was released back in December 2017, but requires macOS High Sierra.

Adobe Premiere Pro: Premiere Pro supports the import of HEVC (H.265) media with resolutions up to 8192×4320, and can export to 720p, 1080p, 4K, and 8K, at 8-bit or 10-bit.

Avid Media Composer: As of this writing, HEVC (H.265) has not yet been supported in Media Composer. If presented with it, Avid MC users will need to convert to DNxHD.

Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve: As of April 2016, HEVC (H.265) can only be decoded on macOS.

Who wants HEVC (H.265) ?

The Broadcast Television Industry

Apple

Apple supports HEVC (H.265) in one form or another across their entire product line, so it’s quite possible to deliver HEVC (H.265) content to hundreds of millions of users almost anywhere.

Microsoft

In either case, Windows 10 should have no problem handling HEVC (H.265) content, which pushes the codec’s reach to over 700 million more mobile and desktop devices.

Living Room Companions

This broad support for HEVC (H.265) has already captured a huge portion of the global media consumption market. However, rivals are fighting back.

The Format Wars

This business model has worked for decades, but HEVC (H.265) hasn’t yet taken root like H.264 did because now HEVC (H.265) faces a worthy competitor: VP9.

VP9

By 2015, it was clear that YouTube didn’t want to license HEVC (H.265) , and didn’t bother with it. Instead, they adopted VP9. VP9 is to VP8 as HEVC is to H.264.

AV1

Whither HEVC (H.265)?

Have you already adopted HEVC (H.265)? Share your thoughts with the community, and let us know how it has changed your workflow.

For more, please access to https://www.soukacatv.com.

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Email:[email protected]

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Source: https://blog.frame.io/2018/09/24/hevc-format-wars/

HEVC (H.265): What is it and Why Should You Care? | Soukacatv.com What is HEVC (H.265)? How does HEVC (H.265) work? The impending format war: HEVC (H.265) vs.

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