> We’ve actually gotten much, much better at image and audio compression in the intervening years,
For Audio, Over the last 25 years We had WMA, Real Audio, Vorbis, MP3 Pro, HE-AAC, these are some well knowns ones, and all of them promised to have MP3 128Kbps quality at half the bitrate. And none of them were even close. Not even at ~100kbps. It was until Opus, and after much tuning of its v 1.3 encoder, did manage to finally edge out LAME MP3 128Kbps with 96Kbps.
I hardly see that as much better audio compression in 25 years time. However we could definitely get much more ( 20 - 30% ) quality out of 128Kbps or 256Kbps with AAC or MPC ( MusePack, my favourite high bitrate Audio codec )
And yet during this time Consumer Internet speed went from a dismal 56Kbps to 10+Mbps, and for many it could be 100+Mbps. That is a 100 to 1000x difference.
For image, while BPG and newer image format do get 50% reduction from JPEG, but consider our display resolution is now 4x to 8x of JPEG era. 50% reduction aren't anywhere enough. I would like to see one that gives same quality of the current JPEG at 25% of file size. I.e 100KB JPEG to 25KB.
Although I am not entirely sure will it matter. It wasn't the Format that is good enough, it is that our Network Bandwidth and Storage has grown at a pace that makes them irrelevant. Compared to the unknown and research required to make those file size reduction, we have a very clear path in 5G evolution, apart from Africa which I am not so sure, Most of North, South America, Europe, Asia will be able to afford 5G Mobile plan with at least 10Mbps Real World Speed by 2030. And I would not be surprised many of the more advanced nation will get 100Mbps or even 300+Mbps in real world usage.
Note: Before anyone mention DataCap, I think 5G with much higher capacity will change the economics of Mobile Data.
For Audio, Over the last 25 years We had WMA, Real Audio, Vorbis, MP3 Pro, HE-AAC, these are some well knowns ones, and all of them promised to have MP3 128Kbps quality at half the bitrate. And none of them were even close. Not even at ~100kbps. It was until Opus, and after much tuning of its v 1.3 encoder, did manage to finally edge out LAME MP3 128Kbps with 96Kbps.
I hardly see that as much better audio compression in 25 years time. However we could definitely get much more ( 20 - 30% ) quality out of 128Kbps or 256Kbps with AAC or MPC ( MusePack, my favourite high bitrate Audio codec )
And yet during this time Consumer Internet speed went from a dismal 56Kbps to 10+Mbps, and for many it could be 100+Mbps. That is a 100 to 1000x difference.
For image, while BPG and newer image format do get 50% reduction from JPEG, but consider our display resolution is now 4x to 8x of JPEG era. 50% reduction aren't anywhere enough. I would like to see one that gives same quality of the current JPEG at 25% of file size. I.e 100KB JPEG to 25KB.
Although I am not entirely sure will it matter. It wasn't the Format that is good enough, it is that our Network Bandwidth and Storage has grown at a pace that makes them irrelevant. Compared to the unknown and research required to make those file size reduction, we have a very clear path in 5G evolution, apart from Africa which I am not so sure, Most of North, South America, Europe, Asia will be able to afford 5G Mobile plan with at least 10Mbps Real World Speed by 2030. And I would not be surprised many of the more advanced nation will get 100Mbps or even 300+Mbps in real world usage.
Note: Before anyone mention DataCap, I think 5G with much higher capacity will change the economics of Mobile Data.