MPEG Releases New Draft, Cuts Bandwidth In Half With H.265 Codec

The Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) has just released a draft for the new video codec know as H.265, which you can find a short review of here. The proposal seeks to use the High Efficency Video Codec (HEVC) in hopes of reducing space and bandwidth used by the current MPEG-4 and H.264 Advanced Video Codec (AVC) standards. The reason for this is simple: H.265 HEVC uses 40-45% less bandwidth and space compared to H.264, which means more room for more content. In Stockhom back in July a group of 450 people got together to approve the codec, which if used would allow for twice the number of TV channels to be broadcast within the same spectrum space. Per Frjdh, Swedish MPEG Delegation Chairman and Manager for Visual Technology at Ericsson Research, has stated it will “have an enormous impact on the industry;” and that video could make up “90 percent of all network traffic” by 2015. H.265 HEVC is expected to be finalized and launched in commercial products at some point in 2013, with big name companies like Apple and Microsoft among others expected to back the new codec. Time will tell, but considering the ability to drop space and bandwidth requirements by such a huge amount it seems likely it will be adopted by many as soon as it launches.