Video data constitutes by far the largest portion of all internet traffic. In video streaming applications, the maximum video quality level that can be reached is in direct relation to the available bandwidth. The most dominant video codec today, AVC/H.264, is widely used for streaming applications but the technology that it is built on is becoming outdated and more recent video codecs such as HEVC can reduce bandwidth requirements by up to 50% with no degradation in video quality. However, due to an expensive and uncertain licensing situation, HEVC has not become widely deployed, even though it has been available for more than four years. At this point, the technology in HEVC is already becoming outdated and the tools included in xvc shows that bandwidth can be reduced significantly compared to HEVC with maintained video quality.

Now the obvious question is, if the licensing situation is so difficult and expensive for HEVC, why is it not difficult and expensive for xvc?

The answer lies in the agility and flexibility of xvc. The xvc codec is a general purpose video codec that can be used for anything from video streaming and broadcasting to surveillance and video conferencing. The xvc license comes with no limitation regarding how xvc can be applied. However, the xvc codec is primarily targeting connected device with an ability to remotely receive and install software updates. This is a fundamental feature, not only in order to push out improvements and additional functionality, but also in order to remove individual tools that have been determined to not be covered by the xvc license. In practice, this means that technology that is patented by third-party organizations unwilling to agree to the xvc license terms, will be removed from xvc and a new version of the codec will be pushed out.

The ability to push out updates to receiving clients puts some additional demand on the services and applications that uses xvc, but without this ability xvc would be at risk of ending up in the same difficult licensing situation as other codecs, e.g. HEVC, and be subject to uncertainty and unreasonable royalty claims.