ITU and ISO Invite Proposals for Post-VVC Video Compression Standard

This announcement signals the next decade of infrastructure investment for streaming giants and hardware manufacturers. By prioritizing AI-driven transformation and machine vision, the ITU-T and ISO/IEC are moving beyond human-centric viewing toward a model where video is increasingly processed by algorithms. For the ecosystem, this creates a dual-track roadmap: while VVC adoption is still scaling in smart TVs and broadcast environments, engineers must now begin evaluating if future gains justify the high computational costs of neural-network-based compression. Watch for specific bitrate reduction targets—likely aiming for a 40% improvement over VVC—when the first test models are benchmarked in early 2027.

The push for a post-VVC standard, often referred to in technical circles as H.267, comes as the industry grapples with the slow adoption cycle of H.266. Although VVC offers roughly 50% bitrate savings over HEVC, per Ant Media in early 2026, widespread browser and HLS support remains limited. This lag has allowed the royalty-free AV1 codec to gain significant ground; by March 2026, AV1 adoption among broadcasters had reached 54%, while VVC integration was primarily concentrated among cloud providers and premium set-top box manufacturers.

Concurrent with the ITU's efforts, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) finalized the AV2 specification in mid-2026, positioning it as a direct competitor to any forthcoming H.267 standard. Per Streaming Media Global in February 2025, the Joint Video Experts Team is exploring two primary paths: the Enhanced Compression Model (ECM), which refines traditional block-based architectures, and Neural Network Video Coding (NNVC). Early ECM test models have already demonstrated over 25% bitrate savings compared to VVC for standard content and up to 40% for screen-content sequences.

Institutional support for these next-generation standards is also shifting geographically. China's AVS3 codec is already mandated for 4K/8K domestic broadcasts, while Brazil adopted a VVC-based "TV 3.0" stack in August 2025, per Decree No. 12,595. These localized mandates are forcing global silicon vendors to integrate advanced decoders even before North American and European streaming platforms fully transition away from H.264, which still commanded over 44% of the encoder market share in late 2025.