AV1 codec now powers 30% of Netflix streaming as company looks forward to AV2

Recap: Support for the AV1 codec has grown considerably since its launch in 2018. Large and small platforms quickly adopted the format to minimize bandwidth consumption while preserving image quality. Netflix, a primary backer of AV1, plans to continue expanding the codec across its applications while also utilizing it and its upcoming successor for new ventures.

Netflix recently confirmed that the AV1 codec is responsible for nearly one-third of its streaming content. In a lengthy Medium post, the company explained how it helped foster the codec's creation and gradually adopted it across various devices.

The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium that includes Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nvidia, and other companies, launched AV1 in 2018 as a successor to Google's VP9 format. The codec compresses data more efficiently than the popular H.264 format and is royalty-free, unlike H.265/HEVC.

Decoding and encoding support ...