Last week, our sister service Faultline, which provides weekly analysis of digital video issues, ran an article on the main candidates to be standard video codecs. The issue of these codecs is highly relevant to mobile operators these days, since so many people watch significant amounts of video over cellular networks. The article, which focused on VVC (Versatile Video Codec), triggered a discussion about the state of codecs in China, given the Chinese investment in VVC technology (including from Alibaba, Kuaishou and Hikvision). This snowballed into a broader investigation into the wealth of alternative video codec options used in the largest single market in the world – one which is seldom mentioned in western codec discussions. In western markets, the…