VCAT Beta 4 Adds VVC Decode — Real-World Battery Benchmarks

VCAT is shifting codec evaluation from short synthetic runs to operational reality: battery drain, thermal events, and sustained playback matter more than headline compression gains. For streaming services, handset vendors, and SoC teams chasing global reach, measurable software-decode profiles determine session length, quality choices, and bundling decisions—especially on $100–$150 Android devices. By open-sourcing shareable test vectors and adding VVC decode, VCAT creates a common yardstick that will pressure decoder vendors and SoC partners to optimize for energy, not just bitrate. Expect these benchmarks to influence per-device playback rules, encoder strategy, and ROI cases for NPU-accelerated or AI codecs.