If you watch Netflix on Android devices, you may have noticed that streaming has become much better recently.
The company has started using a "new" video encoder for Android devices that provides "20% improved compression performance" through the VP9 encoder previously used by the company to display shows and movies on Android devices.
The new encoder used by Netflix is called AV1, and it is a free video encoder.
AV1 is supported by some of the biggest companies technologys, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, Mozilla and Nvidia. So there is a very good chance it will be the next one generic codecs.
What has happened in recent years:
Mozilla and Google offer full support for AV1 in Firefox and Chrome respectively, we had the launch of AV1 support on YouTube in 2018, but also a beta application released by Microsoft called AV1 Video Extension at the end of 2018 to add AV1 video support to Windows 10. The AV1 codec promises better compression without affecting video quality.
Android was chosen as the first mobile platform to adopt the AV1 encoder, and there are reasons for that. Mobile networks are not always reliable, and bandwidth is often not as fast on mobile.
Netflix customers can enable the “Save data” on Netflix to make use of the new AV1 streaming. This is done by going to Menu – Application Settings – Cellular Data Usage. There is the option "Save data" or "Save Data".
The company states that currently there are “selected Movies” that make use of AV1, but it doesn't say which ones are and which ones aren't. Of course, we expect availability to increase over time.
Netflix is a founding member Alliance for Open Media, which oversees the development of AV1. The company has decided to use the new encoder for Android exclusively for now, but plans to extend its use to "more devices".