Subjective evaluation of HEVC and AVC/H.264 in mobile environments

This paper compares the quality of AVC/H.264 and HEVC encoded video in low bandwidth mobile environments. In this study, the focus within the mobile environment is smart phones. The key characteristics of a smart phone are smaller screen size, which is usually 3.5 inches diagonal to 5.0 inches diagonal for high end smart phones and typical cellular network bandwidth, which is 3G or faster. Subjective evaluations were conducted to evaluate the user experience on a mobile device with a small screen size and video coded at 200 and 400 Kbps. The studies showed compelling evidence that a user´s experience in low bandwidth mobile environments is very similar between HEVC and AVC/H.264. The results suggest the benefits of HEVC over AVC/H.264 in a mobile environment with lower video bitrates and resolutions are not as clear.