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A comment on Netflix Now Streaming AV1 on Android. Parent comment

Re:Netflix Now Streaming AV1 on Android by ryantriangles on Thursday February 06, 2020 @01:32AM (#22253898)
Not all of them, hardware AV1 has been rolling out over the last year. LG include hardware AV1 decoding in two of their TV lines now (OLED ZX and NanoCell). MediaTek's new SOCs include it, and they're being used in Xiaomi, Nokia, and Motorola phones this year. Amlogic's TV and set-top box SOCs, used in things like the Amazon Fire TV as well as Android smart TVs and dedicated media players, include it. Realtek's TV SOC with hardware AV1 support ships "early 2020."

Hardware AV1 decoding is available on some Android devices right now, and will ship with a lot more over the course of the year. So it seems the perfect time to ship an AV1 option behind an opt-in setting, which is what they've done. If you don't have hardware support and it's not worth the battery drain then you don't have to select it and there's no way they're removing H.264 support anytime soon.

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Re:Netflix Now Streaming AV1 on Android by alias_neo on Thursday February 06, 2020 @03:00AM (#22254325)
Hopefully the open/free nature means it'll be cheaper to integrate into lower end ARM IPs so that is not just the flagship Snapdragon and Exynos chips that offer AV1

Getting it into the hands of the top 5 Samsung devices would probably cover a significant market share (not to mention getting it into all Apple phones/tablets).

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Re:Netflix Now Streaming AV1 on Android by ksec on Thursday February 06, 2020 @04:21AM (#22254700)
>it'll be cheaper to integrate into

It is not like the hardware part of the die is free. AV1 has comparatively higher decoding requirement even in hardware.

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Re:Netflix Now Streaming AV1 on Android by alias_neo on Thursday February 06, 2020 @11:04AM (#22257064)
Indeed. I imagine some older codecs could be dropped though, and the cost saved on IP should offset it. I'm not sure what the comparative silicon size might be though so I can't speculate.
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