The H.265 codec brings Ultra HDTV resolution in 2013

Alfonso Maruccia 8 hours ago 53 Comments
Just got a new, shiny 50” Full HD (1080p) TV set for your home video needs? 
Prepare to purchase something newer, shinier and with a much, much higher 
resolution soon. The Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding reached a new 
milestone for the H.265 video codec during the past week, and is about to 
unleash the new “monster” video standard within the next year.

The H.265 video codec, also known as High Efficiency Video Coding or HEVC, 
is being designed to replace the current H.264 standard used for high 
definition and Full HD (1920x1080) video encoding and decoding. The Joint 
Collaborative Team, a collaboration effort between the MPEG Expert Group and 
ITU-T, has just achieved a “committee draft” in a meeting in San Jose.

The new video standard is expected to provide a huge difference in data 
transmission and streaming efficiency compared to the previous one, with one 
of the speakers present at the meeting suggesting a 67% improvement.

H.265 will be designed to support new, still to be created video delivery 
and streaming technologies from day one, including devices working at 4K and 
Ultra HDTV (also known as 8K or 4320p) resolutions. Just to put things in 
perspective, the Ultra HDTV definition contains about 16 times the amount of 
pixels present in a 1080p video stream.

Before appearing on the market as a proper video standard, H.265 will have 
to achieve two more milestones: the draft international standard meeting is 
expected to be held within six months from now and the final standard 
ratification should arrive in January 2013.