Who are these content providers that are "abandoning" H.264?

so it's good that both Netflix and YouTube support VP9 and Av1

Good for who? End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free format. They just care about the content being available on their platform.

This is a tired argument. The same argument was attempted when VP8 was new, and when VP9 was new, and now again with AV1. I'm sure the same, worn-out ground will be revisited when AV2 comes along.

End users don't care that TCP\IP is royalty-free or that HTTP and HTML are royalty-free or that any of the other commonly used formats and protocols are royalty-free. They don't care because they don't understand the issues.

Developers care. Builders care. I care. I want to implement video on the internet for any use case without having to consult a lawyer just to understand the licensing implications of doing so. VP9 and AV1 make that possible. VP9 and AV1 normalize video on the internet by making it royalty-free like all the other internet formats and protocols.

Content companies and hardware companies and software companies don't join AOMedia for the fun of it. They join because it's the practical choice:

http://aomedia.org/about-us/

Profit is in the users, not in the developers

The choice isn't AV1 or users. It's AV1 and users.

And I can't find how much licensing actual costs for H.264.

What does that have to do with patents and why people should care?

This is bad for users, whether they realize it or not. They end up with fewer (and potentially worse) options.

It doesn't really have an affect on small content producers. I do live streams for a non profit. We pay one time for Wirecast and the Black Magic hardware. Pay a neglible cost to send the livestream to our provider and they broadcast it. iOS users at least can view from the browser using HLS. We also send another stream to Facebook. How does H.264 patents affect us?

You don't have to "consult a lawyer", unless you are creating your own codec. You pay the licensing fee which in the grand scheme of things is lower than all of your other costs - hosting, development tools, internet costs, etc. and you're done.

[1] Which I wouldn't be so sure. Many H.264-using devices come with disclaimer, that they are not licensed for professional use and that you may need your own license. As usual, consult your lawyer. The point of VP9/AV1 is, that this is not necessary.

End users do care about the cost of their devices. Patent-free formats lower that cost. And patent encumbrances just make it more difficult and costly for manufacturers to include support; sometimes some formats get left out due to cost.

I certainly agree that end users don't care about patents, but they care about some of the practical problems that patent-encumbered formats cause down the line. These are usually not showstoppers, but they help cause customer confusion and sticker shock.

Having to support both formats in the short- or medium-term is definitely annoying and costly for manufacturers, but if we do actually win the open format war (I think the OP is a little overly optimistic there), that problem goes away.

You get a much wider and more loyal user base if you're smart enough not to enforce such silliness anymore.

I was working on networked audio/video devices back in ~2005 when that space was pretty new. We had a line-item BOM cost for encoder/decoder licenses that was not chump-change, which got passed on to customers.

I can only imagine costs have gotten much worse since then. When you take into account all the electronics your average connected person owns: phone, tablet, TV, AppleTV/GoogleTV/Roku, computer OS, etc., it really starts to add up.

Even if the parent poster is overstating and it's on the order of $50 per person, that's a ton of wasted money when you consider the total cost.

Consider all the electronics you've owned over the past 20-25 years. You undoubtedly paid a dollar or two for less complex ones and much more for more complex devices.