I finally found my Season 16, Episode 1 file. It was a .webm file encoded with libvpx. The file name was ugly. The metadata was blank. But the video quality? Flawless.

| Metric | Value (Season 16) | |--------|------------------| | (4K) | 7.2 Mbps (VP9) vs. 13 Mbps (H.264) | | Peak concurrent viewers (live) | 3.4 million (YouTube) | | Average watch‑time | 31 minutes per episode | | Encoding cost reduction | ~ £150 k saved vs. a pure H.264 pipeline (royalty‑free libvpx + open‑source tooling). |

For the non-nerds: libvpx is the open-source video codec developed by Google (used for WebM and VP9). It is the gold standard for archival quality without the patent headaches of H.264.