Cloud is Coming, But HEVC/H.265 is Still Hot

HEVC/H.265 was a popular topic since last year and if you've spent any time at ABTA, NAB, IBC or TV Connected, you'd feel that HEVC/H.265 is still hot, yet cloud is the new star. Ratified as International Standard in January 2013, now, nearly two years after its release, is HEVC/H.265 Streaming still hot? Well, we saw many demos of HEVC/H.265 streaming set-top boxes in exhibitions such as ABTA, NAB, and IBC, and the answer is definitely is yes.

HEVC/H.265 is the successor codec to AVC/H.264, and it’s designed to deliver two key benefits. First, deliver equivalent quality to H.264 at approximately 50 percent the data rate. Second, HEVC/H.265 can also enable larger resolution movies, whether 2K, 4K or ultimately 8K. At the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City, Mark Cousins, senior product manager for Elemental Technologies, said "The interest is really in bandwidth reduction, as opposed to improving quality, HEVC offers between 40 and 50 percent reduction in bandwidth for the same quality, and that seems to be the focus that customers are on. The degradation as bits become unavailable is also much more pleasant to the eye."

Last year or say half year ago, most people are still waiting for 4K content. But now, the entire world is preparing for the HEVC TV world. Here is a list of some news.  

The fever of HEVC/H.265 brings free blood to STB. STB suppliers are all busy promoting their HEVC/H.265 STBs. China, the largest STB OEM and/or ODM country in the world, exported about 80% of world STBs in 2014. If one is care about TV industry, than it is not difficult to find out that this year’s promotion is all about 4K, HEVC and H.265. Take SDMC as an example. SDMC is one of the leading OEM/ODM STB suppliers in China. It launched a series of HEVC/H.265 STBs this year, including both OTT STBs and hybrid STBs. A more persuasive proof would be a report given by a research company called ABI Research. It revealed that Worldwide Ultra HD capable set-top box shipments will reach 48 million by 2020 and the market for HEVC STBs will rise even further to 88 million units. 

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