AV1 is the hot new video codec on the block, offering around 30% better compression than Google’s VP9 standard without an observable misfortune in picture quality. With Chrome and Android currently supporting the format natively, numerous services have begun to switch to it, and now Netflix is joining the fun.
“Today we are excited to announce that Netflix has started streaming AV1 to our Android mobile app,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Selected titles are now available to stream in AV1 for customers who wish to reduce their cellular data usage by enabling the ‘Save Data’ feature.”
Netflix disclosed to us a year ago that it utilized the older VP6 codec on Android, so there should be an observable improvement in data usage for mobile clients. The organization would like to inevitably bring AV1 streaming to all platforms, which sounds exciting — for individuals with home internet data caps, Google Stadia needs all the gigabytes it can get.
