I just want the best codec, and I am willing to a pay a dollar for it.
For Video, H.266 / VVC is just technically superior in every single way. For Images, JPEG Xl is the best for 95%+ of use cases. For audio, we have a AAC-LC, literally as ubiquitous as MP3, true patent free, and at 128+kbps, 95% of cases as good as the state of the audio codec.
And yet we end up in a world where the only accepted choice is AV1 for video, AVIF for images and Opus for Audio.
While I agree with the rest, I must say that in one point you are wrong. Opus is better than AAC-LC. It spans a much wider spectrum of bitrates and it sounds good¹ at any of those. On top Opus is open source which AAC-LC is not afaik.
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¹ good is subjective, I earn my money as a freelance audio engineer, so I should have the ears to notice anything wrong with it.
For Video, H.266 / VVC is just technically superior in every single way. For Images, JPEG Xl is the best for 95%+ of use cases. For audio, we have a AAC-LC, literally as ubiquitous as MP3, true patent free, and at 128+kbps, 95% of cases as good as the state of the audio codec.
And yet we end up in a world where the only accepted choice is AV1 for video, AVIF for images and Opus for Audio.