According to TechSpot, Netflix recently confirmed that the AV1 video codec now powers 30% of its streaming content. The company, a primary backer of the codec through the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), began rolling it out on Android in 2020, expanded to smart TVs in late 2021, and added support for Apple’s M3 and A17 Pro chips in 2023. Netflix now says AV1 HDR streaming using HDR10+ covers 85% of its HDR catalog, with plans to transition all HDR content within the next few months. The AOMedia consortium, which includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others, launched the royalty-free AV1 in 2018 as a successor to Google’s VP9. Furthermore, AOMedia has announced plans to launch the next-generation AV2 codec before the end of this year.
Why this matters to you
So, why should you care about a bunch of technical specs for video compression? Basically, it comes down to quality and cost. A more efficient codec like AV1 means Netflix can stream a higher-quality picture to your screen without using as much data. If you’re on a capped mobile plan, that’s a big deal. It also means better picture quality if your internet connection isn’t the greatest. Netflix highlighted its Film Grain Synthesis tech, which strips out and then re-adds film grain more efficiently. That’s a niche but important detail for preserving the artistic look of movies without wasting bandwidth. For the company, it’s a massive saving on infrastructure costs. But here’s the thing: you need hardware that can decode it. The good news is, if you’ve bought a decent phone, TV, or GPU in the last few years, you probably already can.
The long road to adoption
Look, getting a new codec to 30% of streams on a platform as huge as Netflix is no small feat. It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Content providers won’t encode in AV1 if no devices can play it, and chipmakers won’t build in decoding support if there’s no content. Netflix’s post shows how they hacked through this jungle. They started on Android because mobile is huge and software decoding was viable. For TVs, they had to wait for and certify hardware decoding in SoCs from partners. This slow, deliberate certification process is crucial for reliability. You don’t want your show stuttering because the decoder hiccups. Now that the ecosystem is mature, the rollout can accelerate. It’s a masterclass in platform migration.
What’s next? AV2 and beyond
And they’re not stopping. The announcement of AV2, targeting a release before year’s end, shows this is a continuous race for efficiency. The goals for AV2 are even more ambitious: better support for AR/VR, split-screen streaming, and further compression gains. This is where it gets really interesting for future applications. Think about cloud gaming, where latency and bandwidth are king, or live streaming with complex, interactive graphics. A more efficient codec is the foundation for all of that. It’s also a strategic weapon. With Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion, they’ll have a mountain of classic and new content to re-encode. Starting that process with the most advanced, royalty-free tools available gives them a long-term edge. The shift to software-defined video, where codecs are rapidly iterated, is fundamentally changing the media landscape.
