The MPEG-5 Essential Video Codec (EVC) delivers 4K, 8K, AR/VR, and HDR videos with greater compression and efficiency when compared to the previous-generation standards such as MPEG-4. The codec was officially released by the end of April 2020, and it is being touted as a great solution for delivering video streams over emerging data protocols and networks such as 5G.
The new codec consists of a royalty-free subset and individually switchable enhancements. Huawei, Qualcomm, and Samsung have reaffirmed that they will offer fair, non-discriminatory, and reasonable terms for their essential patent claims covering the new standard. The companies will announce their respective licensing terms for the MPEG-5 EVC standard by April 2022.
Over the next few years, we can expect the MPEG-5 video codec to be integrated into future smartphones, TVs, media players, home theatre systems, and tablets, among other devices.
