The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) is demonstrating a multilayer VVC/H.266 workflow at IBC 2026 that utilizes a common base layer with enhancement layers. This approach aims to support spatial scalability and personalized viewing experiences, such as sign language or reframed visuals, without requiring separate full-resolution streams for each variation.
This technical development addresses the growing tension between personalization and bandwidth costs. By decoupling the base video from specific enhancements, providers can offer accessibility features and multiple resolutions without the storage and egress penalties of independent streams. For the broader ecosystem, this shift toward a common content architecture could simplify asset management for broadcasters and streaming services facing fragmented device requirements. As VVC adoption matures, the industry should monitor whether major streaming platforms integrate these multilayer capabilities into their production pipelines to offset the costs of high-resolution HDR delivery.
VVC/H.266 is gaining commercial momentum as broadcasters and streaming platforms move beyond laboratory validation into production deployments. At NAB Show 2026, V-Nova demonstrated MPEG-5 LCEVC alongside VVC for Brazil's DTV+ transition with more than 50 ecosystem partners including FFmpeg and Realtek, signaling that enhancement-layer codecs are becoming a practical complement to VVC base layers in broadcast pipelines. The MC-IF's multilayer approach at IBC 2026 aligns with this broader trend of using layered coding architectures to deliver multiple service tiers from a single encoded asset, reducing the operational burden on content delivery networks and origin servers.
The regulatory and licensing landscape for VVC continues to shape adoption economics. Brazil's presidential decree of August 27, 2025 made DTV+ the world's first next-generation TV standard to formally require an enhancement-layer codec, and Globo's live UHD feed during the Paris 2024 Olympics ran the combined VVC+LCEVC stack at 10 Mbps over the air with controlled lab testing reaching as low as 7.59 Mbps for 4K HDR. InterDigital, a key MC-IF member and major VVC patent holder, has been active in licensing negotiations, and the forum itself was established in part to coordinate industry positions on royalty structures that could either accelerate or impede VVC deployment at scale. The multilayer demonstration at IBC 2026 adds a technical argument for why operators should commit to VVC infrastructure now: a single base layer can serve multiple personalized outputs, improving the return on encoding investment.
On the technical side, independent benchmarks continue to validate VVC's compression gains over HEVC. Ericsson's AI in RAN software suite, launched in June 2026, reported roughly 10% better spectral efficiency in live trials with T-Mobile's 5G Advanced network, demonstrating that network-side AI optimization and codec-side efficiency improvements are converging to reduce per-bit delivery costs. For VVC specifically, the multilayer architecture demonstrated by MC-IF member Ralf Schaefer's team addresses a gap that single-layer VVC deployments leave open: the inability to serve heterogeneous device capabilities and accessibility requirements without re-encoding. The approach mirrors scalable video coding concepts from earlier standards like SVC (H.264 Annex G) but applies them within VVC's more efficient coding tools, including improved intra prediction and affine motion compensation, which should yield meaningful bitrate savings when serving both standard-dynamic-range mobile clients and high-dynamic-range large-screen endpoints from a common base.
For related background, see StreamingMeme's prior coverage of Open-source VVC decoder targets Android and FFmpeg to accelerate adoption.
The Media Coding Industry Forum is demonstrating a multilayer VVC workflow at IBC 2026 that uses a common base layer with enhancement layers. This architecture allows providers to deliver personalized features like sign language and multiple resolutions without requiring separate full-resolution streams, significantly reducing storage and bandwidth costs for streaming services.
It allows streaming services to provide personalized features, such as sign language or reframed visuals, and multiple resolutions by reusing a single base video layer, which reduces storage and egress costs.
The Media Coding Industry Forum is demonstrating the multilayer VVC workflow at IBC 2026.
By decoupling the base video from specific enhancements, providers avoid the need to store and deliver independent full-resolution streams for every variation of a video service.
The tests include spatial scalability for HDR UHD video using an HD base layer with 2x scaling, and SDR HD video using a 720p base layer.
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