Christmas 2025 8K Round-Up
This week, we thought we’d cover a number of developments that were interesting, but where we didn’t have enough to make a full article. We’re looking at codecs and immersive experiences in this round-up.
We published an article that covered the news that Nokia, Ericsson and the Fraunhofer HHI had collaborated to submit a proposal for the next generation MPEG codec, often referred to as “H.267”, although that name is just speculative. We were interested to spot another report that InterDigital has also developed technology that it has proposed for this next generation standard. It probably won’t be the last as the report highlighted that the evaluation of proposals won’t take place until January 2027. Release of the next generation of MPEG codec is scheduled for 2029.
The report identifies that InterDigital has shown performance gains averaging 25% over VVC, but with some tests showing double that. The usual target for new codecs is a reduction of 50% in bitrates, but one of the aims of H.267 is to avoid a major increase in the complexity of decoding.
Mediatek is also likely to respond to the request for proposals according to the report. The technology will also face competition from the soon to be announced AV2 codec. As we reported, InterDigital bought AI-compression specialist Deep Render in October 2025
Is VVC’s Widespread Adoption Inevitable?
While we’re on the subject of codecs, Robert Moore, President of OP Solutions, LLC-and a member of the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF), thinks that the question about widespread adoption of VVC is about “when, not if”. He sees its adoption as inevitable.
Moore said in a release that he believes that VVC will follow the same path as HEVC as companies build in the decoding hardware to semiconductors.
“Last year, Qualcomm and MediaTek held between 50 and 60 percent of worldwide mobile SoC share,” Moore said in an interview. “Apple accounted for about 20 to 25 percent, and HiSilicon held another 10 to 15 percent.”
Moore also pointed to a high level of involvement from China in developing the VVC technology and he thinks that this will mean that companies from that region will see the standard as less of a risk than AV1 or AV2. He also adresses the issues of patent rights costs for VVC which he sees as ‘neglible’ when devices such as smartphones can cost $800.
The article also highlights the better efficiency of VVC than HEVC, but that would apply also to other advanced codecs.
The purpose of the MC-IF is to promote the MPEG-derived standards.
Deep Space 8K Offers Immersion
In 1979, a group of artists and scientists gathered in the town of Linz, Austria (around 150 miles/240 Km) east of Munich and 80 miles/130 Km north east of Salzburg) to talk about the ‘Digital Revolution’ in an event known as ‘Ars Electronica’. The festival takes place each year and in 1996 the Ars Electronica Center opened as well as the Ars Electronic Futurelab as a full time home for the event and activities. Since then the scope has extended around the world.
The organisation is based around the Center, which it describes as a ‘Museum of the Future’. Part of the Center is called ‘Deep Space 8K’ and uses projection on the wall and ceilings to provide immersive experiences. The surfaces are each 16 x 9m (52′ x 30′) and the images are each created using four Christie Mirage 4K 3DLP laser projectors.
Although sometimes described as giving dual 8K images, the actual images will be less than that because of the stitching of the images together. The Center describes the installation as having 50 million pixels which seems reasonable at around 25 million pixels each rather than the 33 million of ITU 8K. The projectors operate at 120Hz for 3D use.
There is a tracking system to allow interactive activities. We found an interesting video showing the experience. As well as the Center, there is a company Ars Electronica (AE) Solutions which specializes in building projection rooms based on the Linz concepts around the world.
