[benwaggoner]

Originally Posted by qyot27

IMO, probably not. One of the reasons that x264 eclipsed Xvid as quickly as it did (which still took several years; Xvid's apex period was ca. 2003-2005, with a slow declining drop-off for a couple more years after that) is because MPEG-4 ASP was never as deeply entrenched as MPEG-2, which is still used - most obviously for DVD, but also as an option on (mostly older) Blu-ray discs, and it's still widely used for DTV broadcast (although H.264 is in the process of replacing it for this).

Plus cable, which is almost entirely MPEG-2 yet. I doubt we've hit the crossover point where even 50% of eyeball-hours are H.264 instead of MPEG-2.

H.264 is arguably even more ubiquitous than MPEG-2 ever hoped to be, so I'd wager it'll still take several years for HEVC to become the dominant format

MPEG-2 was the first widely used video codec. Since we're now in a mode of multiple coexisting codec generations, I doubt anything will ever have the market share that MPEG-2 had in, say, 2004.

and then you also have to factor in the amount of time it will take for those in the FOSS community to implement and optimize an encoder for it (that is, if development of rival formats like VP9 or Daala don't throw a wrench into the works), while it still has to compete with x264 being as long-mature as it is.

I don't see VP9 or Daala competing with resources with HEVC. VP9 is almost entirely a Google-developed effort, and Daala is a long way from having a locked-down bitstream spec. FOSS developers looking for a mainstream audience are going to be choosing between H.264 and HEVC for the most part.

In perspective, H.264's specs arrived in early 2003, and hdot264 appeared sometime afterward. x264 appeared some time in (late?) 2004, didn't start getting a lot of attention until 2005, and H.264 as a format didn't start dominating over MPEG-4 ASP or SP until 2007 or 2008 in tangible online distribution*. The almost wholesale transition of streaming media to H.264 from the variety of formats they were using before didn't really start to coalesce until what, 2009 or 2010? I'm not really sure when MPEG-2 and VC-1 use on Blu-ray started to drop off, but it was still somewhere in there.

*take Apple and iTunes as examples: many/most of the trailers and music videos available through them prior to formally starting the iTunes Video Store were in either MPEG-4 SP (music videos) or Sorenson 3 (trailers). The Video Store explicitly moved its offered content to H.264, and it was around the same time that the trailers site both mostly moved to H.264 and started distributing 720p and 1080p versions. That's just one example (and probably the only one that matters, at least legally).

I'd say that VC-1/WMV was the dominant legal online format 2004-2008. That's what Amazon Unbox, Zune, Xbox Video, Netflix, CinemaNow, and most of the other early online video companies other than Apple were using. WMV had the only widely available Hollywood-approved DRM and hardware-accelerated decode. Apple was rather unique, as they had their own DRM that didn't even try to be interoperable and didn't have HW accelerated decode for anything for a long time.

There are of course going to be early adopters that like the bleeding edge, but you've got to contend with a lot more standalones and mobile devices that support H.264 and not HEVC, which will impact its rate of adoption in the short term. Active development on Xvid didn't start tapering off until it was in its twilight years, so unless there's just this tidal wave of adoption for HEVC, I'd say that H.264 as a format - and x264 as its premier encoder - still have at least a good 5 years before HEVC's rising level of dominance begins to seriously impact it, at which time the use case will shift more to legacy support for things like disc formats or using H.264 as the 'plays on almost anything and/or not-so-powerful machines' solution that MPEG-4 ASP still manages to hold onto. The 5-year point also is likely to mirror the shift to UHDTV or a new generation of Blu-ray, where HEVC will naturally have broad use.

Blu-ray 4K is still going to be H.264, for example. The rapid rate of mobile device turnover suggests H.264-only devices should be in the minority by end of 2016. But living room devices live a lot longer; <=2013 TVs, STBs, game consoles, etcetera will be in use way past 2016.

I can imagine HEVC starting to see practical use in 2014 and account for a majority of IP streams in 2016. I don't see H.264 being dominant in 2018 overall, but it will certainly still be widely used for popular devices and formats. Heck, MPEG-2 will still be significant in 2018. It'll be a heterogeneous era. But given the dominance of IP delivery by then, I don't see a variety of codecs as being a major problem.