HEVC/H.265 vs. VP9 for Full HD and UHD video: Is there any difference in QoE?

Interest in playing/streaming multimedia content in Full High Definition (Full HD) and the upcoming Ultra High Definition (UHD) is rapidly increasing. However, TVs with such resolutions has higher hardware and bandwidth requirements. Hence, advanced compression tools are essential to provide TV services in Full HD and UHD quality. The aim of this paper is to explore coding efficiency performance of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and VP9 compression tools for video content in Full HD and UHD resolutions. Performance of both video compression tools is evaluated and compared with objective and subjective video quality metrics. The results show that the HEVC and VP9 codecs for Full HD and UHD videos have comparable coding efficiency. Moreover, in several cases, Quality of Experience (QoE) for Full HD, depending on the video content and target bitrate, can outperform QoE for UHD.