They compared against HEVC as well. To quote the article: "This means that we can substantially raise quality, while saving bits, all with a very usable CPU footprint. We have found that the real-world compression/speed trade-offs for AV1 are in fact excellent, and better than HEVC."
And the business problem with HEVC is: "HEVC (aka H.265) comes with unacceptable patent cost, risk and uncertainty."
HEVC had its shot but the terrible licensing stunted its growth and AV1 will replace it. Leonardo Chiariglione says the MPEG business model is broken and I think he's right:
http://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solut...
which is a very real concern. (a bit tired arguing with people defending Google's contraption vs a codec with innovation from dozens of companies)
It isn't. Innovation in video coding is driven by the need to achieve the same image quality in fewer bits for easier and cheaper distribution. All video platforms, providers, and users have a stake in achieving that improvement.
Video coding is not finished yet. There's still more to do and there will be an AV2 eventually.
Not the bit when he says AV1 looks much better than x265 (which he started and led development on) I guess.
I suggest you see the whole video.
I enjoyed the bit when he flashed up the logos of Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Microsoft and other AOM members as showing strong support for HEVC from streaming platforms. And the bit when he said that support by AOM member Apple was really key to HEVC success in America. Or that AOM member Samsung was putting HEVC in TVs.
The guy seems smart and informed, but the video had a lot of dramatic irony since many of the corporate big guns he uses to quantify HEVC success seem to be more and more vocal about their dissatisfaction with HEVC and plans to ditch it for AV1 as soon as possible, which is a phyrric kind of victory.
Do you have any source on this?