Comment by unethical_ban

Patents aside, h265 from my reading is almost universally better than h264. My understanding which could be wrong is that for a given quality h265 will always be smaller, and particularly for >1080p it's recommended. Hardware support has been around since at least the Shield days (2019) so that shouldn't be an issue. Only use h264 if you are needing to hw-decode on really old hardware.

AV1 is the future/present: Fully open standard, better than h265. Only downside is hardware support: You need hardware made in the last few years.