In 2015, Netflix announced that it was going to collaborate with technology giants, namely Amazon, Google, Intel and other companies, with the main goal of developing royalty-free codecs that would work better on new and modern device models. The main feature of royalty-free codecs is that they can be used without paying royalties or licenses. In 2018, the major companies revealed the “fruit” of their collaboration, called the “AV1” codec. The AV1 codec promises to provide not only freedom from paying licenses, but also savings of up to 30% on the amount of data used to stream 4K HDR video. Now, Netflix has started using the AV1 codec as an “option”. In addition, the AV1 codec is only intended for those Android users who have enabled the “Data Saving” function.
One reason that could limit the use of the AV1 codec for playback is likely the lack of hardware support. This will result in people having to use “longer battery life” to watch the same videos.
It is also possible to enable the AV1 codec instead of VP9 on YouTube, under the “Playback” and “Performance” settings. Additionally, users are warned that using the AV1 codec for anything above 480p requires a powerful computer.
Finally, Netflix says it still plans to roll out AV1 beyond Android to all platforms, starting with data savings on mobile, while also noting that the AV1 codec offers a 20% improvement in compression efficiency over VP9. Therefore, this is a significant leap in technology that surpasses the data of VC1, Silverlight, and 720 x 480 res videos that have a maximum speed of 3,400 kbps.
