Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compressio

Google urges fast adoption of VP9 video compression

Another big issue is that VP9 isn't competing only against H.264, a codec that's about a decade old. It also must reckon with HEVC, aka H.265, a standard that's now complete and that has the potential to spread as widely as H.264.

Just as VP9 doubles the image quality over VP8 for a given number of bits per second -- the bit rate -- H.265 doubles the H.264 quality. Bultje said that H.265 image quality outperforms VP9 by about 1 percent overall , though there's a lot of variability from one video to the next, based on Google's tests so far.

But there's another big part of the VP9 sales pitch: no royalty payments. VP9 is free to use , unlike H.264.

HEVC/H.265 also will be free to use once the licensing organization MPEG LA finishes up its patent royalty plans. Google sees that as an unacceptable financial burden for startups, programmers, schools, and others who might want to launch a video project on the Internet.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57584706-93/...mpression/

......seems to be a big financial incentive with google's preference of VP9 vs. HEVC, regardless, anyone notice the consistency of the statement " 50% average video bandwidth reduction ", (or something to that effect)?