Netflix starts streaming over the AV1 codec to reduce data consumption
We've mentioned the AV1 codec a couple of times already. AV1 is a royalty-free codec and offers improved compression compared to vp9 or hevc, the video bandwidth reduction can run upwards to 30 percent, without you seeing a difference. The best thing yet, this is a royalty-free model.
It is stated that AV1 can approximately be 30% more efficient than h.265, which the streaming service currently uses for the users of its 4K subscription. Compared to vp9, it would be 20% more efficient.
-- Netflix --
Today we are excited to announce that Netflix has started streaming AV1 to our Android mobile app. AV1 is a high performance, royalty-free video codec that provides 20% improved compression efficiency over our VP9† encodes. AV1 is made possible by the wide-ranging industry commitment of expertise and intellectual property within the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), of which Netflix is a founding member.
Our support for AV1 represents Netflix’s continued investment in delivering the most efficient and highest quality video streams. For our mobile environment, AV1 follows on our work with VP9, which we released as part of our mobile encodes in 2016 and further optimized with shot-based encodes in 2018.
While our goal is to roll out AV1 on all of our platforms, we see a good fit for AV1’s compression efficiency in the mobile space where cellular networks can be unreliable, and our members have limited data plans. Selected titles are now available to stream in AV1 for customers who wish to reduce their cellular data usage by enabling the “Save Data” feature.
Our AV1 support on Android leverages the open-source dav1d decoder built by the VideoLAN, VLC, and FFmpeg communities and sponsored by the Alliance for Open Media. Here we have optimized dav1d so that it can play Netflix content, which is 10-bit color. In the spirit of making AV1 widely available, we are sponsoring an open-source effort to optimize 10-bit performance further and make these gains available to all.
As codec performance improves over time, we plan to expand our AV1 usage to more use cases and are now also working with device and chipset partners to extend this into hardware.
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Senior Member
Posts: 2649
Joined: 2015-06-11
How many people have a hardware decoder for av1? Quite no-one, both mobile and TVs.
Sisvel dosn't think it's royalty-free...
TVs have crap SoCs, software decoding is mostly a no-go.
Senior Member
Posts: 1492
Joined: 2011-02-17
I read that the Dav1d author is looking into GPU acceleration, curious how that will go. The hybrid decoding support for HEVC on Kepler did alleviate the CPU alot back when I tried it IIRC.
I wouldn't mind trying AV1 on Netflix on my laptop next time I'm using mobile broadband, the cap is a bigger concern for me than power consumption. It's a pity it's only for Android so far, I doubt my old Nexus 7 2013 will handle it.
Senior Member
Posts: 7270
Joined: 2008-03-06
What a bummer.
And here I thought that a firmware update could mitigate a portion of the decoding mechanism and at a later stage, getting new TV or the codec is upgraded to support older hardware.
Just wishful thinking.
Senior Member
Posts: 5031
Joined: 2008-09-07

Funny, I honestly did not know this was possible or even know this was being done. Very nice.
Senior Member
Posts: 1949
Joined: 2012-04-30
4K container allows for 150 Mbit, not just 128.
turning up the sharpness to past 80% on a screen (outside maybe office use moni)
is one of the worst things for picture quality.
especially since some have (separate) settings for upscaling.
no need for 8K content, can be upscaled from 2/4K like its done now.
completely ignoring that you would need a 85" or bigger to make use of the res,
or sit 3ft from a 65/75", which no one will do.
recommended MINIMUM distance is related to res AND screen size,
that doesnt mean i HAVE to sit at 3 ft distance to a 55", its up to the user.