Efficient video compression is a key technology component that enables high-quality media services across different platforms and connection types. Several different video codecs have been used since the start of TV digitalization, and more efficient compression methods are constantly being developed. This paper focuses on mobile video streaming applications, a rapidly growing application area for which it is absolutely crucial to use the network resources as efficiently as possible. However, compression efficiency is not the only factor that determines which video codec is best suited to be used. There needs to be a clear and reasonable licensing scheme, the encoding complexity needs to be at a manageable level, but most importantly, the receivers must be able to support decoding of the codec. The xvc codec is a software-defined video compression format, which, in our tests, delivers unprecedented compression performance, is available with a single reasonable license, and with a light-weight decoding process that can be run in software on today’s mobile phones and tablets.