Most of the past algos that have been developed have been done by commercial development teams. This means they are typically driven by the current requirements

Most of the past algos that have been developed have been done by commercial development teams. This means they are typically driven by the current requirements of the user market. The techniques that get developed therefore tend to be mostly increments to older techniques and since corporates value their IP, these get patented, everyone is happy. If we could step out of this corporate context, we would likely do better on the algos. On the topic of video, the latest stuff is still based on decades old core technology. Its still block-based motion compensated transforms which has been around since at least MPEG-1. Don't see any leaps and bounds in what's used now. No wavelets, no fractals, no other new stuff. Just better optimized versions of the base.