AV1 — Now Powering 30% of Netflix Streaming

This post details Netflix's AV1 codec adoption journey, which now powers approximately 30% of all Netflix streaming.

• •AV1 was developed through the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), co-founded by Netflix in 2015, and officially released in 2018
• •Netflix launched AV1 on Android in 2020 using the dav1d software decoder, then expanded to smart TVs in late 2021, web browsers in 2022, and Apple devices with M3/A17 Pro chips in 2023
• •AV1 delivers VMAF scores 4.3 points higher than AVC and 0.9 points higher than HEVC, uses one-third less bandwidth, and results in 45% fewer buffering interruptions
• •AV1 HDR streaming launched in March 2025 using HDR10+ with dynamic metadata for scene-dependent tone mapping, now covering 85% of Netflix's HDR catalog
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