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Television

Netflix Starts Rolling Out AV1 Codec To TVs (9to5google.com) 59

Posted by BeauHD from the ready-for-the-masses dept.
This week, following successful tests on Android smartphones and tablets, Netflix has announced that it will bring AV1 to TVs. 9to5Google reports: In a blog post this week, Netflix confirms it will start using the AV1 codec on some TVs. AV1, which has been available since 2018, allows for the more efficient encoding and decoding of data for streaming, leading to higher quality for the end user and better use of bandwidth for providers. However, the codec relies on hardware support. To ensure that TVs using AV1 streams will provide a good experience, Netflix says it analyzes the steam to ensure the device is spec-compliant for AV1 decoding.

For the time being, Netflix isn't specifically announcing which devices will support AV1 outside of the Netflix app on Sony's PS4 Pro console. On other TVs, support is only specified as working on "a number of AV1 capable TVs." In theory, this should include a considerable number of Android TV models.
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Netflix Starts Rolling Out AV1 Codec To TVs More

Netflix Starts Rolling Out AV1 Codec To TVs

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  • surely a large proportion of tv users are using a media stick

  • Different TVs take different times to come to a boil.

  • Stages (Score:4, Insightful)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @07:49PM (#61976779)

    First they will roll out AV1 to HW that DOES HAVE explicit AV1 HW decoders in silicon.

    Then, they will move to hardware that, while not having AV1 HW decoders in silicon, is both beeffy and modern enough to do the AV1 decoding mostly in the GPU pipeline, whiout touching the CPU much (if at all), using the most modern OpenCL/DirectCompute/Metal (or even better, doing it in the video drivers themselves).

    Then they will move to Hardware beefy enough (but not modern enough) so that it can do the AV1 rendering using a combintion of Older OpenCL/DirectCompute/Metal + SIMD instructions (or, again, baking the AV1 decoding support on the video drivers themselves).

    All the while, hoping that even older HW will go the way of the Dodo.

    This will take time, good coders, U$Ds and alliances with HW vendors. After all, is not like Netflix will do all the heavy lifting to implement AV1 decoding on some older HW+OS platform and then the HW vendor will take the FOSS implementation and plug it in the OS as a Shared Library for all other APPa that compete with Netfilx on the platform to use.

    Netflix will likely want the HW vendor share some of the burden of developing the libraries or Enhanced Video Drivers.

    But this is actually great news. Increasing the footprint of AV1 is good, mostly because, going forward, it will increase dedicated HW support in silicon.

    Even if I personaly use H264.ify on my machines, precisely because there is no HW dedicated HW support in silicon, I am all happy for this.

    • You're probably aware that a number of hardware companies are members of the "Alliance for open media" which is the group of companies that developed AV1. So hardware support is certainly coming. I believe that latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD have some hardware support for decoding AV1.
      So I think it's a given that in the next few years most TVs and smartphones will have hardware support for it.
      Btw, I remember reading someone say that GPUs are not an specially efficient way of doing video decoding if lacki

    • The best news about AV1 becoming actually used officially somewhere, is that H.265 / HEVC is basically officially dead, and the MPEG-LA with it.

      Patent encumbrance is dealt a blow, and literally everyone except MPEG-LA wins. The world is an incrementally better place.

  • "What is the best video codec, then?
    In short: if you want a cutting edge, next generation codec and are limited by licensing and bandwidth costs, AV1 is the way to go for you. On the other hand, if you want to support the most available (resource limited/ mobile) devices or have a need for real-time, low latency encoding, it would be better to stick to HEVC for the time being. The merits of an initial HEVC/AV1 duopoly should be considered together with a gradual switch toward AV1 (and its successors) as tim

    • Re:Seems AV1 is better than HEVC / H.265 (Score:5, Informative)

      by piojo ( 995934 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @09:43PM (#61977067)

      I did careful testing on videos with slow action and a lot of clear shots of faces, comparing result videos with VQProbe--IMO split frame comparisons are more trustworthy for detail comparison than metrics like VMAF. I was surprised to realize x265 captures more detail than AOM AV1 at equal file sizes, and is much faster to encode. (SVT AV1 is much worse.) AV1 would only be better at the very slow encode speeds, and those are orders of magnitude slower than x265 at "slow" speed (which is a sweet spot of efficiency versus speed).

      Experienced AV1 users seem to know it eats up noise and some detail. What's the point of using it at all? Is it only good for low quality streams? I suspect nobody except Netflix and Amazon are encoding it slowly enough for it to be more efficient at high quality than H265.

      • Re:Seems AV1 is better than HEVC / H.265 (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @01:26AM (#61977399)

        The point? Cheaper to use. H265 has expensive licensing fees. AV1 is open source and royalty free. If you're encoding your own shit, then no, there's probably no point, unless you're an open source purist.

        And honestly, if you need to freeze frame and do side by side comparisons to really notice a difference, then does anyone (except videophiles) really care? Encoding speed isn't really an issue for commercial companies. It's a one-time operation, and they can throw as much hardware as they want at that problem.

        • Yep, this looks like the beginning of the end for MPEG. FOSS has won on video.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by piojo ( 995934 )

          And honestly, if you need to freeze frame and do side by side comparisons to really notice a difference, then does anyone (except videophiles) really care?

          I don't plan to care about tiny differences, but some exactitude is needed when establishing a baseline. For instance, if I change encoders, I should start with parameters that give roughly equal output to my old encoder parameters. Otherwise I don't know whether the switch gains anything.

          Furthermore, while the split screen comparison isn't always necessary to see a quality difference, it's absolutely necessary to stop me from imagining a quality difference that isn't there.

      • Re:Seems AV1 is better than HEVC / H.265 (Score:4, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @05:26AM (#61977655) Homepage Journal

        Keep in mind two things.

        1. Netflix doesn't care about encoding time, they will spend as long as needed to get good results.

        2. AV1, like most of these codecs, only defines the decoder. The encoder just has to produce a complaint stream. So there are different encoder implementations, some better than others. Your encoder might be worse than what Netflix uses, similar to how MP3 encoders vary in quality quite dramatically.

      • AV1 would only be better at the very slow encode speeds, and those are orders of magnitude slower than x265 at "slow" speed

        It's a time thing. AV1 is basically a teenager compared to H.265, encoding speeds are making incredible leaps in both cases and once hardware encoders are released the entire discussion will become moot.

        Every codec starts somewhere.

      • YouTube does encode some highly-played videos with AV1. The slower encoding speed and lower file size tradeoff must be worth for them.

    • Unfortunately, HEVC / H.265 is so weighed down with patent licensing that no commercial service wants to touch it. This is why AV1 exists - to put the sledgehammer to MPEG-LA.

      They got too greedy so the entire tech industry decided to band together and fuck them over, and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

  • Does it overheat the device and sample the magic smoke?

  • MPEG-1 (Score:4)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2021 @08:48PM (#61976921)

    Forget these patented tech. Use MPEG-1, it is the only format guaranteed to be patent unencumbered worldwide. MPEG-2, while expired everywhere else, has patents in Malaysia that last until 2035.

    • Forget these patented tech. Use MPEG-1, it is the only format guaranteed to be patent unencumbered worldwide. MPEG-2, while expired everywhere else, has patents in Malaysia that last until 2035.

      Few people care about patents other than hardware developers. What people care about is licensing terms. They are far more expensive and dangerous than patents to people using a codec.

  • ... send me DVDs via US Mail?

  • It appears the Firestick 4k MAX support AV1

    https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/c... [reddit.com]

  • "To ensure that TVs using AV1 streams will provide a good experience, Netflix says it analyzes the steam to ensure the device is spec-compliant for AV1 decoding"

    They must have incredible technology to be able to measure performance through ambient water droplets.

  • This will be the end of the current smart TVs. At some point, Netflix will stop supporting older hardware that doesn't do AV1, which probably includes most of today's smart TVs. Supposedly this was one of the major points of contention between Google and Roku on the YouTube negotiations. Many people used to streaming directly from their TVs will have to get media sticks or replace their TVs. We're probably several years away from this. Any thoughts as to how long we have left with current hardware?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Better to get a large dumb TV that just accepts HDMI input, and then a cheap android tv box to feed content to it.
      Replacing a small cheap android tv box is much easier and cheaper than replacing a large TV that due to its size might require specialised shipping, multiple people to carry it and work to hang it on the wall etc.

      • Indeed, the Nvidia Shield has been around for a while, and is reasonably priced.

      • > Better to get a large dumb TV ...

        Where? Most TVs nowadays are smart TVs, where "smart" (DRM, ads, phone-home) is about as desirable as "smart" quotes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Where? Most TVs nowadays are smart TVs, where "smart" (DRM, ads, phone-home) is about as desirable as "smart" quotes.

          Invest in a "digital signage" display then. These are basically the same TVs as retail except because they're designed for digital signage, they don't come with all the smart tv crap.

          But they generally are the exact same TV model, just different firmware, so you get all the inputs (because you don't know where the digital signage signal is coming from).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by crow ( 16139 )

          Some "smart" TVs work great as dumb TVs if you never configure the Internet. That was at least true for my Roku TV. (It has some other glitches with audio, but that's a separate story.)

      • Yeah, just makes sense to keep media players & display panels separate for the time being. Both are changing every few years. 4K's already mainstream & I bet an even bigger resolution is not far behind. Then there may be different video streaming services using different CODECS for a while until things settle down a bit. And now with streaming services releasing their own hardware, it's not unlikely that some will attempt lockins to exclude the competition. Good to keep your options open with plain

      • Oh you can buy a "dumb" tv but it's going to cost triple that of a smart tv.

    • This will be a perpetual problem for smart tvs. For some time already there have been some that aren't compatible with Youtube (maybe Netflix) anymore since they changed APIs and/or codecs. As you say, AV1 will probably be the feature that obsoletes most current smart tvs and in the future there will probably be others.
      It's a nuisance but at least you're always gonna be able to plug external devices.
      It's funny, some years ago media PCs were a thing since almost no TVs would have an internal computer and t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        Roku's recent issue with YouTube was contractual, not technical. But if you're talking older TVs, then that's probably correct. We have an older BluRay player that has streaming, and I recently checked, and none of the streaming features work anymore. It would be nice if Sony would update the firmware to remove the broken services, but I understand they don't want to spend one yen supporting old hardware.

  • https://www.theverge.com/2021/... [theverge.com]

    Netflix shared this lineup of with The Verge:

    Select Samsung 2020 UHD Smart TVs
    Select Samsung 2020 UHD QLED Smart TVs
    Select Samsung 2020 8K QLED Smart TVs
    Samsung The Frame 2020 Smart TVs
    Samsung The Serif 2020 Smart TVs
    Samsung The Terrace 2020 Smart TVs
    Any TV connected to a PS

  • AV1 not quite ready (Score:3)

    by Kazymyr ( 190114 ) on Thursday November 11, 2021 @08:16AM (#61977843) Journal

    In my direct experience, AV1 is not quite ready yet. It still has some major issues with encoding content correctly. And even more major issues doing it with multithreading. But since the rolling out of it will be only with a decoding purpose, consumers should not be affected by that since AFAIK the decoding part works correctly. It's only the content providers who will have to struggle getting their content encoded correctly.

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