Netflix streaming upgrade now available on these TVs and streaming devices
Netflix has started streaming movies and TV shows using the AV1 video codec on select smart TVs and streaming devices.
The company previously rolled out AV1 playback to the Android mobile app in February 2020.
AV1 is the first high-efficiency video codec format with a royalty-free licence from Alliance of Open Media (AOMedia).
First published in 2018, the codec streams with better visual quality at the same bitrate than Netflix’s current H.264-AVC encoder.
Netflix said it is confident the advanced encoding format can deliver a better experience to its subscribers.
“We compared AV1 to other codecs over thousands of Netflix titles, and saw significant compression efficiency improvements from AV1,” the streaming giant stated.
“With higher compression efficiency, the bandwidth needed for streaming is reduced, and thus it is easier for playback to reach the highest resolution for that session,” Netflix explained.
Netflix said the implementation of AV1 in its quality of experience testing among members produced positive results.
Netflix explained that drops in quality during playback also reduced by up to 38% on its testing base.
“The improvement is particularly significant among sessions that experience serious network congestion and the lowest visual quality,” Netflix said.
“Given AV1 consumes less bandwidth for any given quality level, our players are able to sustain the video quality for a longer period of time and do not need to switch to a lower bitrate stream as much as before.”
The duration of 4K video streamed on eligible sessions also increased by about 5%, indicating the stream could more regularly reach that resolution.
The mobile app implementation of AV1 uses the open-source software decoder dav1d, developed by VideoLAN, VLC, and FFmpeg communities.
With devices like TVs, streaming boxes, streaming sticks, and gaming consoles, however, AV1 playback requires hardware acceleration.
Fortunately, Netflix said a lot of progress was made on developing AV1 hardware solutions during 2020.
Semiconductor companies announced decoder SoCs for a range of consumer electronics applications, while TV manufacturers released TVs ready for AV1 streaming.
“Netflix has also partnered with YouTube to develop an open-source solution for an AV1 decoder on game consoles that utilises the additional power of GPUs,” it added.
Netflix provided a list of devices that support the new codec to The Verge. These are as follows:
- Select Samsung 2020 UHD Smart TVs
- Select Samsung 2020 UHD QLED Smart TVs
- Select Samsung 2020 8K QLED Smart TVs
- Samsung The Frame 2020 Smart TVs
- Samsung The Serif 2020 Smart TVs
- Samsung The Terrace 2020 Smart TVs
- Any TV connected to a PS4 Pro streaming with the Netflix app
- Select Amazon Fire TV devices with Fire OS 7 and above
- Select Android TV devices with Android OS 10 and above
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