- AV2 enables higher video quality using less bandwidth
- Multiple simultaneous streams for multi-camera, AR/VR and 3D TV
- Expected to be adopted towards the end of 2026
AV2, the next generation of the widely used AV1 streaming standard, could provide a big boost to your favorite streaming service – and it may also improve the efficiency of streaming high-resolution 3D movies, which is great news for the six people who still own a 3D TV.
A new report from FlatpanelsHD shows that AV2 offers significant advantages over the existing AV1 standard. In a presentation by Netflix research scientist Andrey Norkin, who along with experts like Apple, Google, Meta and Tencent is a contributor to AV2 creator the Alliance for Open Media, shared new benchmarks detailing the performance improvement.
The short version: higher quality, lower bandwidth, smiling faces everywhere.
What does AV2 actually offer?
In Norkin’s presentation, he demonstrated that AV2 offers 30% more video compression than AV1. In other words, AV2 can deliver the same quality as AV1 with 30% less bandwidth. This has particularly important implications for 4K and 8K video, as it could persuade streamers to provide higher quality video streams without limiting them to the most expensive tiers. It should be noted, however, that Norkin did not offer a comparison to H.264 (MPEG4), H.265 (HEVC), or H.266 (VVC) codecs. As the report notes, H.264 is the most widely used codec for HD video and H.265 is the same for 4K.
One of the coolest aspects of AV2 is that it is also designed to deliver multi-stream video, which is when multiple streams of the same thing are transmitted simultaneously, such as the stereo visuals of a 3D movie, or multiple camera views, or the live and studio feeds of a sporting event.
Given that AV2 will be supported by Disney, Apple, Google and more, this could prove very interesting – and that could mean more immersive video content such as Los Angeles Lakers games being streamed on Apple’s Vision Pro. Both VR and AR are expected to be the main beneficiaries of the standard.
The full AV2 specification will be released later this year, and 53% of Alliance for Open Media members say they will adopt it within 12 months.
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