I prefer the JPEG to the Daala in that one sample image; JPEG does have more artifacts, but Daala seems to preserve less detail.
For low-to-medium bitrate video that might be the correct tradeoff though.
[edit] H264 and H265 look like successive incremental improvements over JPEG in the direction I personally prefer; they reduce artifacts without losing detail.
I agree; JPEG has more artifacts which is most noticeable in low-frequency areas, but preserves more detail in high-frequency areas.
All of the non-JPEG codecs seem to have greatly reduce artifacts in the low-frequency areas, but for some of them (VP8 in particular) it was at a significant loss of detail.
Apart from JPEG's blockiness and VP8's complete loss of detail, it looks like the main difference between codecs is which parts of the image have detail preserved. Some codecs preserve subtle sky texture at the expense of the trees, others do the opposite.
I did not see detail in the JPEG that was not present in the h.265; a few regions in the grass still look slightly better, since they have more noise and less blur, and that's more pleasant to the eye in high-frequency areas.
Also note that there is more detail in the h.265 than the JPEG where the trees meet the sky.
For low-to-medium bitrate video that might be the correct tradeoff though.
[edit] H264 and H265 look like successive incremental improvements over JPEG in the direction I personally prefer; they reduce artifacts without losing detail.