AV1 is the modern open, royalty-free video codec that's reshaping streaming economics in 2026. Developed by the Alliance for Open Media — a consortium that includes Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Mozilla, Intel, AMD and NVIDIA — AV1 delivers roughly 30 % smaller files than HEVC at the same quality, and 50–70 % smaller than H.264. For a streaming service, that's a direct line-item reduction on the CDN bill plus better-quality streams for viewers on slow connections.
What changed in 2024–2026 is hardware support and encoder maturity. Netflix reports AV1 now powers 30 % of its global streams (with 85 % of its HDR catalog AV1-ready); YouTube serves over 75 % of video playback in AV1; 88 % of large-screen devices certified by Netflix since 2021 support AV1 hardware decode; nearly every smart TV manufactured since 2022 has AV1 silicon (Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, TCL). On the encoder side, Intel and Netflix's SVT-AV1 has made software encoding fast enough for serious production use.
Two practical considerations remain. First, encoding cost: AV1 still takes much longer to encode than H.264 or HEVC, which matters for live and for high-volume libraries; hardware AV1 encoders (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) help dramatically. Second, older device fallback: a small but non-zero fraction of viewers still need H.264 to play anything. The standard answer in 2026 is "ship AV1 for everyone who can decode it, ship H.264 as the safety net" — the licensing changes that raised H.264 streaming fees from $100K to up to $4.5M/year in 2026 only sharpen the case for migrating.
