abhibeckert

bigmushroom said:

Not sure, what you mean with VP9 being proprietary - it's open sourced with a waver on all patent claims. However, it's not an ITU standard such as HEVC.

VP9 was developed by Google exclusively, unlike HEVC which was developed by the the United Nations. The ITU is responsible for other technology you may have heard of such as JPEG and MP3, or and others you're using but may not be familiar like our telephone and broadband network protocols.

Google's waiver on patent claims is only available for companies that "do not engage in patent litigation" which means any large tech corporation will have to negotiate a patent license off Google to use VP9. They are not eligible for the waiver. And there are probably dozens of patent trolls who own patents that might apply to VP9.

But the real reason, in my opinion, is that hardware decoding for VP9 isn't widely available, and since the Apple TV is designed to draw about 2 Watts of power while streaming a video, software decoding simply isn't possible. I wouldn't be surprised if a desktop PC processor draws 100 watts or more while playing a 4K VP9 video.

The Apple TV processor is probably fast enough to decode VP9 for a short video, but I think an hour or more is likely to cause overheating issues since it doesn't have any fans.