Netflix rolls out Streaming AV1 on Android

Netflix has started streaming AV1 to their Android mobile app. What this basically means is that Netflix is now streaming some of its content using a new system that will compress files with up to 20% more efficiency.

AV1 is a high performance, royalty-free video codec that provides 20% improved compression efficiency over our VP9† encodes.

AV1 is made possible by the wide-ranging industry commitment of expertise and intellectual property within the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), of which Netflix is a founding member.

Our support for AV1 represents Netflix’s continued investment in delivering the most efficient and highest quality video streams. For our mobile environment, AV1 follows on our work with VP9, which we released as part of our mobile encodes in 2016 and further optimized with shot-based encodes in 2018 said Netflix in an announcement.

Netflix’s AV1 support on Android leverages the open-source dav1d decoder built by the VideoLAN, VLC, and FFmpeg communities and sponsored by the Alliance for Open Media.

The company has optimized dav1d so that it can play Netflix content, which is 10-bit color.

For users, it means that you will be seeing the same quality of Netflix streaming on your Android phone but you will be using up to 20% less data.

To watch a stream using the AV1 codec, you’ll need to select the “Save Data” feature when watching content on your Android device. If you can’t see the “Save Data” feature, that means that particular content is not currently available to stream with the AV1 codec yet.