AV1 has had several issues plaguing its uptake (as a close observer of the technology): - The reference silicon design for an AV1 decoder was very space-ineffi

AV1 has had several issues plaguing its uptake (as a close observer of the technology): - The reference silicon design for an AV1 decoder was very space-inefficient, and so many chip vendors refused to use it. This, however, necessitated the development of internal or 3rd-party decoding IP which slowed uptake considerably. - AV1, partially due to it's patent-free design, has an extremely complicated compression process. So complicated, that even in software it is still a few dozen times slower than H.264 encoding. This, plus the first issue mentioned above, means on-chip AV1 encoding is a ways away. - AV1, despite being "patent-free," has had a patent troll (Sisvel) come along and claim that they have a bunch of patents applying to it. They want 20 cents per device. AV1's founding group claims to have a legal defense fund for members but the terms and coverage are unclear. Sisvel wants 20 cents per device using AV1, so now you need to get the lawyers involved to figure out whether to bet on paying Sisvel or bet on taking the AV1 founder's view of the matter. - Finally... there's AV2 coming. Though a ways away, it will use recently-expired patents to further help its compression capabilities, new techniques that couldn't be completed on time for AV1, and will feature a more optimized reference silicon implementation that might be actually easily usable by chip designers this time.