VIDEO ENCODING SHOWDOWN

How to use the latest GPUs to boost your livestreaming video quality

- Jarred Walton

THE ERA OF PHYSICAL MEDIA is largely dead and buried. Though many people still have old VCR tapes, stacks of DVDs, and the more modern Blu-ray discs at home, mention optical discs and the rising generation won’t know what you’re talking about.

We’ve long since stopped including recommendations for optical drives in our PC builds, though it’s still possible to buy a Blu-ray drive for a PC—just like it’s possible to ignore the smart features and connectivity options most TVs now include, and instead opt for a 30-second delay while the Blu-ray player loads up a menu screen. Our quest for instant gratification via Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, or any number of other streaming services means that people are more comfortable using Roku than a DVD.

The consumption of streaming videos dwarfs the production of content, but it’s in the creation stage that quality levels are defined. H.264 remains the most popular video codec of the past decade but as we cram higher resolution and higher quality content into the same bandwidth, its reign may be coming to an end. The good news is that its replacement could already be here.

The Sony Large screen 65in rear projection TV was released at $3,000 in 2004.

THE NEED FOR COMPRESSION