Google’s VP9 video codec has received support from most manufacturers.

Google announced that almost all major manufacturers will soon provide support for the VP9 video codec in their products and allow YouTube to broadcast 4K video, TechCrunch reports . Prior to this, VP9 support was included in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and in several video players such as FFmpeg.

Google claims that video coding in VP9 format gives about 50% bandwidth savings compared to its older VP8 codec or H.264 standard. Among the manufacturers who agreed to support VP9 are ARM, Broadcom, Intel, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Panasonic, Philips, Qualcomm, Realtek, Samsung, Sigma, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.

Already in 2015, the integrated support for VP9 can be seen in many models of televisions and Blu-ray players of the manufacturers mentioned, and in computers and mobile devices support for the codec will appear during 2014.
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For most laptops and high-end mobile devices, hardware support is optional, as they can use a software decoder. However, for best results and to save battery power, hardware support is needed. Almost all of the manufacturers mentioned already offer this support for H.264.



For YouTube, VP9 support means that the video will run faster, although transferring all videos to the new format will take some time. The effect of switching to VP9 will be visible on streaming video of any resolution, but it will be most noticeable on video in HD and especially in 4K.

Google believes that for 4K, more efficient codecs are “absolutely necessary”, and we are confident that this resolution will very quickly become the standard, especially since prices on both screens and 4K cameras have dropped noticeably over the past few years.

Getting the manufacturers' consent was simple, considering that VP9 is not burdened with complex licensing issues. Google made the codec freely available, while vendors wishing to use the H.264 standard must pay a licensing fee to MPEG LA (which then distributes this money among the various patent holders).

LG, Panasonic and Sony are going to showcase YouTube in 4K at CES this year, and YouTube is said to be working with a number of operators to record 4K videos for the exhibition. Google is mainly interested in support for VP9 producers because of YouTube, but in the long term, other video sites will also benefit from broad codec support.