Unless chipmakers port the AV2 design to older, cheaper nodes, it’s just not happening for average users. We’ll probably see some Chinese TV chip makers throw in an AV2 decoder just to check a box, but as an actual encoder? I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.
You need hardware encoders for things like cameras because they need to encode in real time since the buffer would quickly overflow otherwise.
- Video calls
- Screen/webcam recording
- Live streaming
- Real-time transcoding for media servers (don’t know much about this but I’ve heard it’s a thing)
- Game streaming
- Video editing (making exporting less frustrating)
In other words, unless on smart phones, don't expect broadly distributed AV2 encoding hardware.
If it does happen on PC, it will be most likely some courtesy of the hardware chip designers.
(As a side project, I am writting my walyand compositor, and I know that if it supports screen recording, that's going to be something certainly hacky and I can disable at compile time).
I can see a lot of non-techy people not knowing how to do this but among people who know how to do it I bet it’s above 50% who use it
Are you sure this isn't just “things I do are commonplace, and things I don't are incredibly niche”?
Video calls is just a feature expected on smart phones, and it means there we better have an hardware encoder.
I don't know if AV2 is defining them, but it needs hard "profiles", that to give a scope for hardware implementations.
Well, it all depends on how AV2 is designed, and defining those profiles is very probably a feedback loop between the AV2 designers and hardware implementors.