A deep-dive into the relative performance of five encoding providers by the Streaming Learning Center (SLC) has uncovered a concerning gap between the major cloud providers and their upstart rivals. Brightcove and Bitmovin appear to knock lumps out of AWS Elemental and Microsoft Azure, and worse for the incumbent cloud platforms, even Tencent beats them. This is the case for HEVC, at least, and the report’s author, the venerable Jan Ozer, notes that the trend of AWS being the most expensive option has continued. In the 2021 analysis, AWS was twice as pricey, and Ozer noted in 2022 that this has continued – likely due to AWS’ encoding technique producing the highest or second highest top rung bitrate, which will…