The AV2 Video Standard Has Released (Final v1.0 Specification)

The new AV2 spec is finally here, and on paper it sounds like the future of video: better picture quality, smaller file sizes, and extra help for things like virtual reality, split-screen viewing, and screen sharing. In plain English, it’s the next big rulebook for how video can be squeezed down without looking terrible. But the comments? Absolutely not ready to roll out the red carpet.

The loudest reaction was basically: cool story, call me in five years. One commenter bluntly said AV2 is "currently unusable" because encoding is painfully slow, with predictions that normal people won’t really see it until around 2028 to 2030. That instantly set the mood: less "revolution now," more "early trailer for a movie you won’t watch until the next decade." Another thread veered into legal drama, with a commenter bringing up Dolby and accusing it of patent bullying over AV1, reminding everyone that in tech, even a shiny new standard can come bundled with courtroom anxiety.

And because the internet cannot resist a bit, the naming jokes arrived right on cue. People started riffing on what a future AV2 decoder should be called, tossing out repo-name puns like a hackathon open mic. Meanwhile, one image nerd used the moment to drag AVIF, praising it for tiny images but roasting its lossless mode as "a joke" next to rivals. The funniest mood of all came from the Apple crowd: one person joked they were still waiting for Apple TV to properly catch up to AV1, and now they’re apparently expected to wait for AV2 too. Classic tech: by the time the future arrives, the comments have already moved on.