
Netflix Starts Using VP9 Codec, Saving Up to 36% of Bandwidth - salemh
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/netflix-offline-downloads-codecs-vp9-1201932502/
======
shakna
A lot more technical information over at Netflix's blog [0].

I'm unsure what to think about VP9 gaining some decent ground. Firstly, it's
great that effort is going into more effecient video streaming, considering
how difficult to compress and encode quality video can be. However, the chosen
standard doesn't seem to be the best on offer.

Just sort of Google randomly choosing one [1], and Netflix hedging their bets
that others will adopt if they do, so the codec continues to get improved, and
they aren't left hanging with the bill if everyone else ignores it.

[0] [http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/12/more-efficient-mobile-
en...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/12/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-
for.html)

[1] Not quite, Google developed VP9 themselves.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Netflix and, well basically everyone of note in web video, from Amazon to
Microsoft, is now on board with the Alliance for Open Media and their AV1
codec, which is largely based on VP10. So this just gives them a head start on
that.

On Netflix's YouTube channel they have technical presentation on some of the
research they are doing on codec quality and objective metrics.

[https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCK2q3q4dshZHzn-
EP3ZdUeA](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCK2q3q4dshZHzn-EP3ZdUeA)

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occamrazor
Why not H.265? Other benchmarks suggest a comparable or even higher benefit
moving from H.264 Main to H.265 Main, and hardware support for decoding is
already present in many phones.

~~~
jamesfmilne
H265 is a patent licensing minefield at the moment.

------
giovannibajo1
Can somebody elaborate on how many Android devices support VP9 with hardware
decoding (wrt to AVC Main support)? The article is shallow on this, but I
think it's an important point, because it affects how much battery is being
consumed on the client side, and thus user satisfaction with the service.

~~~
andybak
Some info here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9#Hardware_encoding.2Fdecodi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9#Hardware_encoding.2Fdecoding_support)

------
salemh
Note to observers/moderators, title of article: "How Netflix Keeps Downloads
From Eating Up All Your Phone Storage"

Title-page of site: "Netflix Starts Using VP9 Codec, Saving Up to 36% of
Bandwidth"

Site-title seems more descriptive/of interest to HN.

