>>44223137>I think h264 is the new MPEG2, going to stay with us for 10+ yearsThat's true in some ways, but not in others. The only media markets where h.264 was adopted for broadcast were early-adopters anyway (i.e., they upgraded existing MPEG2 systems), which indicates to me that they have a higher potential for upgrading yet again. In markets where MPEG2 is still a broadcast standard, it's mostly because those markets have very high resistance to upgrading technology (for instance, the US was very late to mandate digital broadcasts in the first place, for public safety reasons--old people get all their information about tornados etc. from TV), which means that there is a low likelihood of upgrading to h.264 any time soon. By the time those markets are ready to upgrade, HEVC might be a good choice for standardization.
(Although, it might already be too late for that--they would prefer to standardize a technology as SOON as it's viable, rather than waiting until it is already mature and halfway through its lifecycle--so you might be right after all.)
For physical media, h.264 certainly became "the next MPEG2" with the Bluray specification, but all current-generation bluray players necessarily include processors that are improving all the time. 4K support is already being added to the list of capabilities, where it didn't exist before, with the transition eased by the fact that most of these players can connect to the internet and download firmware updates. In the future, perhaps firmware updates will enable a smooth transition to a new generation of players that can decode HEVC.
For streaming media, of course, the transition is already seamless. Although legacy applications on hardware like Apple TV, Chromecast, etc. will continue to require H.264 availability, they could roll out a new codec while continuing to offer the old videos very easily (this is what youtube has done several times before, upgrading from Sorenson to flash video to AVC to VP8).
