Engadget:

Fraunhofer, the German company that helped develop the H.264, H.265 and MP3 encoding formats, has unveiled a new video encoding standard that could severely reduce streaming bottlenecks. Called H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC), it’s specifically designed for 4K and 8K streaming and reduces data requirements by around 50 percent compared to H.265 HEVC (high-efficiency video coding). At the same time, the improved compression won’t compromise visual quality.

The company developed the codec in collaboration with partners including Apple, Ericsson, Intel, Huawei, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Sony. It will be licensed by the Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF), a group with 34 major member companies. The aim there is to avoid the kind of licensing squabbles that plagued the H.264 codec a decade ago.

Fraunhofer said that if a 90-minute, H.265/HEVC-encoded movie is about 10GB, it would only be 5GB for the same quality when encoded with the new codec.

Welcome news for those of us who blow through our data caps each month.