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Netflix Starts Streaming AV1 On Android To Save Cellular Data (9to5google.com) 34

Posted by BeauHD from the data-saving dept.
Netflix announced today that it's beginning to stream video using AV1 on Android. This high-performance, royalty-free codec provides 20% improved compression efficiency over VP9. 9to5Google reports: Developed by the Alliance for Open Media, founding members include Google, Netflix, and Amazon -- all large video providers. Netflix says its "goal is to roll out AV1 on all of our platforms." In starting on mobile, the service cites how "cellular networks can be unreliable" and "limited data plans." That is particularly the case for subscribers abroad, a key growth market. This results in an overall "good fit for AV1's compression efficiency."

At launch, the "Save Data" option -- More tab > App Settings > Cellular Data Usage -- must be set in the Android client. Netflix only specifies "selected titles" as being available to stream over AV1. Moving forward, Netflix's AV1 usage will expand to more use cases as "codec performance improves over time." The service is already working with "device and chipset partners to extend this into hardware."
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Netflix Starts Streaming AV1 On Android To Save Cellular Data More

Netflix Starts Streaming AV1 On Android To Save Cellular Data

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  • Current state of AV1? (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:06AM (#59696896)

    Can someone with more knowledge of the area fill me in on the current state of AV1? Last I heard about it it was horrendously slow on the compression side and no hardware compressors were available? Is this still the case? Are they just throwing raw CPU horsepower at it?

    Also how about decoding? It would seem with hardware decoders available for h.265 the switch to AV1 would be very detrimental to battery life.

    • Re:Current state of AV1? (Score:5, Informative)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnar@gm a i l . com> on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:35AM (#59696952) Homepage Journal

      Can someone with more knowledge of the area fill me in on the current state of AV1? Last I heard about it it was horrendously slow on the compression side and no hardware compressors were available? Is this still the case? Are they just throwing raw CPU horsepower at it?

      Also how about decoding? It would seem with hardware decoders available for h.265 the switch to AV1 would be very detrimental to battery life.

      Encoding times have dropped dramatically in the last 12 months. Check out this article to see see the difference (in 2018 encoding was a thousand times slower than h265, now it's only 3 times slower). https://www.streamingmedia.com... [streamingmedia.com]

      There are more and more hw based decoding options. Mediatek just launched a new SOC that supports hw based decoding. I expect hw decoders to show up in a few 2020 products, (LG announced that their 2020 TVs will have it) and become commonplace the following year.

    • Re:Current state of AV1? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:49AM (#59696966) Homepage

      Last I heard about it it was horrendously slow on the compression side and no hardware compressors were available?

      HW encoders have already been released albeit they are not meant for the mere mortals. As for software encoders, yeah, they have become a lot faster recently however none of them come close to libaom in terms of quality and this codec is still horrendously slow.

      It would seem with hardware decoders available for h.265 the switch to AV1 would be very detrimental to battery life.

      That's indeed the case. Some rare consumer devices with HW AV1 decoding have been announced but its uptake still leaves a lot to be desired. So far it's been just ... extremely sad.

    • Re:Current state of AV1? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ERJ ( 600451 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @11:11AM (#59697596)
      For the Netflix model, even if it is 100x slower, it doesn't matter much if the file is viewed one million times. Small savings in size add up big when you serve up that content at the scope they do.

    • It's still infinitely cheaper at both the encoding and decoding ends than the patent-encumbered money-grubbing abomination that is H.265.

    • It is slow on the compression side. Of the most popular codecs, AOM is slow but good quality, rav1e is a non-starter and SVT is comparatively fast but still a bit unstable. Intel have demoed SVT doing 1080p live, albeit on a fairly high-end multi core system. SVT is improving quickly too.

  • A word of caution (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:43AM (#59696960) Homepage
    Mind that at the moment there are zero mobile SoCs which support HW accelerated AV1 decoding which means your battery consumption while using this option will be higher than when using "classic" codecs like H.264/H.265 or VP9. How much higher it's hard to say - someone needs to test that.

    Considering that the AV1 spec was finalized over a year ago that's kinda strange. From what I've heard even the upcoming SnapDragon 865 SoC will not support the AV1 codec in any shape or form.

    • Re:A word of caution (Score:4, Informative)

      by dinfinity ( 2300094 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @07:37AM (#59697018)

      First thing I thought too.

      For reference, an indication of which hardware has VP9 hardware decoding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • LG, Mediatek and lots of others are planning on releasing hardware decoders later this year i.e. months away...

      look for it as a spec on the launches at GSMA conference

      it can take years to do a SOC... all in good time...

       

    • Even if you have HW acceleration, it doesn't do much good if the drivers are crap. My wife's laptop has VP9 acceleration but often locks up after awhile watching Youtube videos, which try and push VP9 at you by default. Even when it doesn't lock up, it runs insanely hot and drains the battery like crazy. Solution was to disable the VP9 codec (media.peerconnection.video.vp9_enabled = false) and now it's fine.
      • Aren't laptops using the GPU to decode video? Which GPU is that?
        • And are you referring to the Windows drivers or some Linux distro?
        • Intel (cough) "GPU", and Intel drivers on Win10. In other words crap video hardware with crap drivers on a crap OS, but she needs it for work. Disabling VP9 fixed things.
        • Oh, and as a follow-up, this is a relatively common problem, there are even Firefox add-ons like h264ify that force Youtube back to H.264 to deal with this.
    • Unfortunately that Sisvel patent FUDing seems to have done its intended job, as it looks like hardware manufacturers decided to "wait it out" for one year until the whole thing settles. Sisvel hasn't announced any patents, much less an essentiality overview, but they did announce intended licensing fees IF they ever find a patent to assert against AV1, and this probably scared hardware vendors (who are still dealing with the HEVC patent mess btw).

    • Having the option to trade data for battery life with a setting is pretty nice though.

    • You can't design a new SoC in one year (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @01:26PM (#59698206)

      Considering that the AV1 spec was finalized over a year ago that's kinda strange. From what I've heard even the upcoming SnapDragon 865 SoC will not support the AV1 codec in any shape or form.

      Designing a new SoC or CPU usually takes about 3-4 years [forbes.com]. The 12-18 month release cycle we're used to is because companies have multiple design teams working on an overlapping schedule. That is, a design team doesn't finish designing a new SoC in 12 months, then immediately start designing the next SoC to be released the following year. Team A is 1 year in the design process and 25% of the way through, team B is 2 years in and 50% of the way through, team C is 3 years in and 75% of the way through, and team D has just finished their 4 year design and will begin working on a newer design which will be ready in 4 years.

      So if the AV1 spec was just finalized in 2019, then don't expect to see hardware decode support for it until 2022-2023 (unless they specifically held up part of the design waiting for the spec to be finalized). I assume Netflix is going to have a transition period, where they'll stream either the VP9 or AV1 version of the show depending on which format your hardware is capable of decoding. (I've been warning people buying phones, tablets, and streaming boxes about this - that whatever they bought in 2018-2020 will probably be obsolete within 5 years. The way older smart TVs can no longer stream YouTube content and have had the YouTube app removed from their libraries due to YouTube phasing out h.264 leaving only VP9 versions of their videos.)

  • NVidia Shield, Android TVs (Score:3)

    by dltaylor ( 7510 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @07:42AM (#59697028)

    There are Android devices other than 'phones (my Shield, my friend's Sony TV). Neither of these is using cellular data. Are these also going to be fed AV1? Netflix video is encrypted, AFAIK. How could I tell whether I'm using the extra power to decode AV1 over h.265?

    BTW, how power-efficient is VP9?

    May sound like nit-picking but California's energy bills are about to go nuts, and my condo doesn't have anywhere to put sufficient solar.

    • May sound like nit-picking but California's energy bills are about to go nuts, and my condo doesn't have anywhere to put sufficient solar.

      My friend you are definitely nit-picking. Running a CPU decode on a small device vs a hardware decode will likely cost you $0.50 per year, even at Germany's prices let alone the cheaper Californian ones.

      You'll be fine.

  • In Tokyo au/KDDI (one of the top 3 phone companies) has a 20GB cap, then it costs $10 per GB. Realistically this is way too low especially if you are using Netflix. They do offer a specific plan called for example flat 25 with netflix which is about 50-60 USD/month for 20GB and unlimited netflix and a maybe Hulu I think. Competitors like Softbank are offering 50-60GB which is more realistic.

  • Save on cellular data, lose battery life (Score:3)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @09:04AM (#59697156)

    Sadly, there is still not much silicon that supports AV1 decoding in Hardware. therefore, yes, you will get less data for same quality, but use more battery life.

    This is not a condemnation of AV1, is simply the way things are at the moment. As time goes by, more HW makers will implement AV1 support in silicon, and as TFS explicitly says:

    The service is already working with "device and chipset partners to extend this into hardware."

    • If you build it, they will come.

      Netflix probably wants customers to demand hardware support so they don't have to trade battery for data. like this. Manufacturers will actually roll out HW support now that there's a significant use case.

      Sam

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • They don't care about end user battery life, they care about bandwidth costs. If you want quality, you wont get it from streams.

  • As usual companies saving some bandwidth and moving the problem onto your device. It is like those stupid delta-rpms that turn a normally 1 minute update into a 5 minute update.

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