> after standardization there's very little room to "develop the algorithms" because nonconformant implementations would be useless.
there is A LOT OF ROOM to develop the algorithms. it seems that you are confused about what an algorithm is, since you seemingly think that there can be only 1 algorithm that can decode a given media file.
There is a lot of room to do exactly the same thing more efficiently, which doesn't count as different algorithms.
Are bubble sort and quick sort the same algorithm?
But they COULD be entirely different algorithms. And frankly, even if they're only 20% different, that's still different.
An algorithm is a sequence of steps and logic. You can create many different sequences to still get the same result.