Wow. To me, the big news here is that ~30% of devices now support AV1 hardware decoding. The article lists a bunch of examples of devices that have gained it in the past few years. I had no idea it was getting that popular -- fantastic news!

So now that h.264, h.265, and AV1 seem to be the three major codecs with hardware support, I wonder what will be the next one?

> To me, the big news here is that ~30% of devices now support AV1 hardware decoding

Where did it say that?

> AV1 powers approximately 30% of all Netflix viewing

Is admittedly a bit non-specific, it could be interpreted as 30% of users or 30% of hours-of-video-streamed, which are very different metrics. If 5% of your users are using AV1, but that 5% watches far above the average, you can have a minority userbase with an outsized representation in hours viewed.

I'm not saying that's the case, just giving an example of how it doesn't necessarily translate to 30% of devices using Netflix supporting AV1.

Also, the blog post identifies that there is an effective/efficient software decoder, which allows people without hardware acceleration to still view AV1 media in some cases (the case they defined was Android based phones). So that kinda complicates what "X% of devices support AV1 playback," as it doesn't necessarily mean they have hardware decoding.

> So now that h.264, h.265, and AV1 seem to be the three major codecs with hardware support, I wonder what will be the next one?

Hopefully, we can just stay on AV1 for a long while. I don't feel any need to obsolete all the hardware that's now finally getting hardware decoding support for AV1.

> So now that h.264, h.265, and AV1 seem to be the three major codecs with hardware support, I wonder what will be the next one?

Hopefully AV2.

I'm not too surprised. It's similar to the metric that "XX% of Internet is on IPv6" -- it's almost entirely driven by mobile devices, specifically phones. As soon as both mainstream Android and iPhones support it, the adoption of AV1 should be very 'easy'.

(And yes, even for something like Netflix lots of people consume it with phones.)

That's not at all how I read it.

They mentioned they delivered a software decoder on android first, then they also targeted web browsers (presumably through wasm). So out of these 30%, a good chunk of it is software not hardware.

That being said, it's a pretty compelling argument for phone and tv manufacturers to get their act together, as Apple has already done.

how does that mean "~30% of devices now support AV1 hardware encoding"? I'm guessing you meant hardware decoding???

Not trolling, but I'd bet something that's augmented with generative AI. Not to the level of describing scenes with words, but context-aware interpolation.

I mean... I bought a Samsung TV in 2020, and it already supported AV1 HW decoding.

2020 feels close, but that's 5 years.

>So now that h.264, h.265, and AV1 seem to be the three major codecs with hardware support

That'd be h264 (associated patents expired in most of the world), vp9 and av1.

h265 aka HEVC is less common due to dodgy, abusive licensing. Some vendors even disable it with drivers despite hardware support because it is nothing but legal trouble.