AV1 AOMedia Video 1 (AV1)

What AV1 is

AOMedia Video 1 is an open, royalty-free video coding format designed for transmission over the internet, according to Wikipedia. It was developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015, as the successor to VP9. The bitstream specification was announced on March 28, 2018, with a validated version 1.0.0 on June 25, 2018. The formal document is the AV1 Bitstream and Decoding Process Specification, written by Argon Design for AOMedia's Codec Working Group, whose chair sits at Google. It defines three profiles. Profile 0 (Main) covers 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:0, profile 1 (High) adds 4:4:4, and profile 2 (Professional) adds 12-bit and 4:2:2.

For home theater, the point is the profile 0 10-bit path. Netflix says any AV1 decoder can handle 10-bit content, and that the high bit depth helps deliver subtle details and minimizes the risk of banding (see color banding). The format also includes film grain synthesis: the encoder removes grain, sends a small parametric description, and the decoder re-adds it. Netflix says this lets it deliver cinematic grain without the usual data cost.

How much more efficient than HEVC and H.264

Efficiency claims for AV1 vary by test, so the safest numbers come from a service running it at scale. Netflix's December 2025 report, summarized by StreamingMediaBlog, says AV1 sessions use one-third less bandwidth than both AVC and HEVC, with 45% fewer buffering interruptions. Average VMAF scores run 4.3 points higher than AVC and 0.9 points higher than HEVC. In plain terms, the quality gain over HEVC is small and the saving shows up as bandwidth. Older lab tests give a different picture of the 2018 starting point. Wikipedia cites Facebook tests finding about 34% lower bitrates than VP9 and about 50% lower than x264 at similar visual quality, and Netflix 720p tests in 2017 finding AV1 about 25% more efficient than VP9, both with much slower encoding.

A hypothetical shows what one-third means. An hour of video at 15 Mbps is 6.75 GB (15 megabits times 3,600 seconds, divided by 8 bits per byte, divided by 1,000). At the same quality, a one-third saving drops that to 4.5 GB, a 2.25 GB difference per hour. On a capped connection or a congested Wi-Fi link, that is the difference between a stable 4K stream and a downshift. See 4K streaming bandwidth for the per-service speeds.

Who streams it

Netflix started streaming AV1 on Android in February 2020, according to Wikipedia, and in December 2025 reported that AV1 powers approximately 30% of all Netflix on-demand viewing. AVC remains its primary codec, and Netflix expects AV1 to become the top one soon. AOMedia's Netflix case study says AV1 is now Netflix's second most-streamed format, with a 5% increase in 4K viewing hours and 38% fewer quality down-switches. It reports that 85% of Netflix's HDR catalog by view-hours has AV1 with HDR10+ coverage, expected to reach 100% within a couple of months. YouTube began deploying AV1 in 2018 and has served 8K video in AV1 since 2020, per Wikipedia, and the list of other services includes Vimeo, Twitch, Bilibili, and Meta. The catch is that a service only sends AV1 when the device can decode it, so a TV without a decoder gets HEVC or AVC instead, and the bandwidth saving never reaches your living room.

Which TVs and streamers decode it

Netflix says 88% of large-screen devices submitted for certification over 2021 to 2025 supported AV1, most with full 4K at 60 fps. That aggregate does not tell you about a specific model. Coconut's device list, updated March 2025 and without cited sources, names LG's C2 and G2 OLEDs, Samsung's QN90B and QN95B, Sony's XR-A95K and XR-X95K, TCL's 6-Series and 8-Series, Hisense's U8H and U9H, and Panasonic's JZ2000 and LZ2000 as playing AV1, though it does not say whether decoding is in hardware. On streamers it lists Chromecast with Google TV, Roku Ultra and Streaming Stick 4K, Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Fire TV Cube (3rd generation), and the NVIDIA Shield, and on consoles the Xbox Series X and S. Treat that list as a lead to verify on the spec sheet, not a purchase guarantee.

Apple is the notable change. Pocket-lint reports, from Apple's announcement, that the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K with the A19 chip is the first Apple TV with a dedicated AV1 decoder, and iThinkDifferent adds that Apple says the hardware decoder allows more efficient streaming with less bandwidth and that the third-generation model never listed AV1. Apple has not said which apps or files will use it, so a decoder alone does not make every stream sharper. See Apple TV 4K for the box. Elsewhere, Wikipedia lists hardware AV1 decode in the iPhone 15 Pro, NVIDIA RTX 30 series (decode only) and RTX 40 and later (decode and encode), AMD RDNA 2 (decode only), and Intel Arc GPUs.

Common confusions

AV1 is a compression method, not an HDR format. HDR10+ or Dolby Vision metadata rides inside an AV1 stream, as Netflix's 85% HDR-catalog figure shows, but AV1 itself does not set brightness or color. It is also not a quality guarantee: it lowers the bitrate needed for a given quality, and a service can spend the savings on less data instead of better pictures. A better codec narrows the gap between a stream and a disc but does not close it; disc versus streaming bitrate covers that comparison, and UHD Blu-ray covers the disc side. Last, AOMedia announced AV2 in September 2025, but AV1 is what is shipping in TVs today. For streamer picks, see best 4K streaming device.