AV1: An open but debated alternative

As HEVC support confuses users and challenges tech companies, an alternative codec addresses much of the complexity associated with HEVC.

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was created as an open, royalty-free video codec by a group of companies called the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), which was tired of dealing with HEVC patent licensing. AV1 launched in 2018 under a royalty-free patent policy, and its reference implementations use a permissive software license (available here). In 2023, AOMedia, whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, and Samsung, claimed that AV1 is 30 percent more efficient than HEVC.

“AOMedia believes that its royalty-free patent policy and permissive copyright license help bring next-generation media experiences to more people, faster,” Dr. Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, executive director of AOMedia, told me.

HEVC was introduced in 2013, so companies had years to adopt it before AV1 arrived. But AV1 is still less common than you might expect after eight years, largely due to compatibility issues. Its supposed efficiency gains compared to HEVC stem from its use of more advanced algorithms. But those algorithms typically require more compression and more powerful hardware. In 2023, Meta, a member of AOMedia, named client-side hardware decoding as AV1’s biggest obstacle.

After AV1’s release, some hardware companies were reluctant to adopt AV1 decoders because the advanced requirements could drive up consumer prices, according to a 2025 report from The Verge. AV1 support would also introduce burdensome and unreasonable complexity and costs to some gadgets, including budget smartphones and Blu-ray players (the former rarely support AV1, and the latter generally do not).

Software solutions can handle client-side decoding, but they can also consume more computing resources and drain battery life.

As a result, some components, streaming devices, and many end devices, especially smartphones, have only recently added hardware-based AV1 support—or support it only partially, such as for decoding alone.