Google's 2014 VP9 Presentation

Hardware partnerships in 2014 solidify YouTube's VP9 as it's next streaming codec. Google's previous VP8 codec failed to win out over H.264, which was already massively adopted by the time VP8 showed up. VP9 boasts a 50% increase in bandwidth efficiency over its predecessor VP8. Almost all major hardware vendors will begin to support VP9 natively within their products this year, as well as enable YouTube to stream up to 4k to computers and devices. The list of hardware partners is exhaustive and includes:

• ARM
• Intel
• Nvidia
• Samsung
• Sony
• Panasonic
• Sigma
• LG

Google is also making the codec available for free, while hardware and software vendors who want to use the H.264 standard have to pay a licensing fee to MPEG LA (which then distributes it to the various patent holders). – Micah Van Hove