[tential]

I can't WAIT for the storage benefits though. I thought I had so much free space left. All of a sudden I 'm down to 2.8 TB left and fast approaching 0.

So do you propose to transcode all your old material to h265? That's the only way you are going to recover what you have used up!

Frankly, the idea is unappealing to me. I'd rather spend money on a new hard drive than futz around forever finding the best encoding parameters.

I don't think it's too hard. When x265 becomes widely used (so 2-5 years) think about how much processing power will have improved by then? Ok, now that I type that comment out and I think about it, yes intel hasn't made very big strides in processing power, but I'm hoping that will change. We're overdue for a 20-30% increase in processing power jump. If not on Broadwell maybe Skylake? I'm sure it'll come within 2-5 years. Also, my PC sits idle with a pretty decent processor (4770k). It isn't doing anything as it is, and 2-5 years, i'll be upgrading to another pretty decent processor that will probably sit idle a LOT of the time as well. Might as well use the power to convert my library.

Although hey, you're probably right, I'll probably just end up getting new hard drives. But even then, it still benefits me on the new content that I obtain that will be in x265 vs x264. I'm sure the first people to switch over to x265 will be release groups/torrenters who want to cut down on bandwidth costs (I just looked into a seedbox and it x265 would let you seed twice as much content as before).

If you think about it though, all of the key pieces for x265 are coming together.
4K TVs are starting to get popular and tons of people will buy them not realizing that they have no use for it and that they will see no image quality benefit since they sit far as hell away from the TV, or own a TV that isn't extremely massive.
NetFlix, is already trying to put content out in 4K, which is going to prompt people to purchase 4K TVs, even though I'm sure that 4K content Netflix is putting out is low bitrate and probably just as good or even worse than the 1080p higher bitrate stream.
Cable Providers want to catch up to NetFlix/internet providers, and it will cut down the bandwidth.

Mainly though everything has to do with BANDWIDTH. x265 allows people to save a lot of cash on bandwidth so I do think it'll come quicker than we expect it to.

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You will need to wait until ffmpeg supports it and then xbmc syncs a new version of ffmpeg. The latter will not happen for gotham.

It better happen sooner rather than later. I have a couple of hevc files already that I gave a friend who uses Plex and he said they play just fine there. If support for the format is going to be that slow, I might have to make the switch. I really don't want to because I've spent so much time in XBMC and love it, but if my library can shrink and give me more space and XBMC doesn't jump on board until v14 a year from now (or whenever it comes), I'll be long gone (and so will many others).

When x265 is widespread, it'll be on XBMC no need to get so anxious. I dunno how you have so many HEVC files already. Even doing a torrent search on popular sites revealed under 25 files that are HEVC so you must be encoding them yourself. It's simple really, just wait. There will be SO MANY improvements to HEVC, that you'll end up having to reencode everything all over again.

Reading the comments though on some of the torrents out there, it does seem to be quite impressive. Either way though, no one is forcing you to use XBMC. If you don't like it, you can kindly gtfo and use Plex if you like it so much. I'd give plex a try, but personally, I haven't gotten far enough into XBMC to start fiddling with a new program. There is still so much on XBMC I don't even know how to do yet. Every couple weeks/months I find something new that makes my experience that much better.