HEVC maintains 4K dominance despite AV1 pressure and licensing friction

HEVC is the critical linchpin for ultra-high-definition streaming, enabling the bandwidth efficiency required for global 4K scale. However, the 'royalty-free' promise of AV1 and the recent arrival of VVC (H.266) are forcing a multi-codec strategy. For engineers, HEVC is the current safe bet for hardware-accelerated live workflows, but licensing costs for software implementations remain a non-trivial line item. Strategists must balance HEVC's massive device reach against AV1's growing browser and VOD presence to avoid ballooning royalty exposure. Watch for further consolidation in the patent landscape as pool administrators attempt to simplify terms for edge-case licensees.

In the months leading up to mid-2026, the licensing landscape for HEVC saw a significant shift toward consolidation and administrative simplification. Per ipfray (December 2025), Access Advance acquired the administrator of Via Licensing Alliance’s HEVC and VVC patent pools. This move aimed to create a 'one-stop shop' for licensing these standards, potentially reducing the administrative friction that originally drove companies like Google and Mozilla toward the royalty-free AV1 codec. Access Advance subsequently extended a deadline to June 30, 2026, for new licensees to lock in current royalty rates through 2030, according to CSI Magazine (January 2026). This extension delayed a planned 25% rate increase, reflecting a push for market stability as the industry moves beyond the initial H.264 peak.

Technically, HEVC's browser support has expanded significantly but remains dependent on hardware availability. Per TestMu AI reporting (May 2026), while Safari continues to offer native support across all Apple platforms, Chrome and Firefox now enable HEVC by default only when the underlying hardware includes a dedicated decoder. This lack of a universal software-only fallback path continues to make HEVC a challenge for web-first publishers compared to AV1. Meanwhile, the emergence of the Video Distribution Patent (VDP) Pool in early 2025 by Access Advance marked a new attempt to collect royalties directly from content distributors, a move that Jan Ozer noted in Streaming Learning Center (December 2025) has increased legal scrutiny for major services like Disney+ and Netflix.

While VVC (H.266) was ratified in 2020 as HEVC's successor, its adoption remains limited to high-end broadcast and 8K niches. Per FlatpanelsHD (June 2026), the market lacks immediate motivation to shift from HEVC due to sufficient existing bandwidth and the high computational cost of VVC encoding. Consequently, industry analysts predict that HEVC will continue to coexist alongside AV1 as the dominant standard for the majority of the current decade, only eventually being surpassed by MPEG4 AVC in total global usage by 2028.