The Alliance for Open Media came out with the royalty-free AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) codec back in 2017 to replace H.264 as the primary codec for online streaming and media consumption. The AV1 codec offered around 30% better compression than Google's previous VP9 standard without hampering picture quality. Since its release, the AV1 codec has been adopted by several services and platforms, including Google Chrome, Android, YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, and Facebook. Recently, Microsoft also announced that it was bringing hardware-based AV1 codec support to Windows 10. Now, in a recent panel discussion at IBC on the codec's commercial readiness, Matt Frost from Google has revealed that the company will soon bring AV1 support to Stadia, Photos, Meet, and TV.

During the panel discussion, Frost revealed that the AV1 codec has already been deployed in several of the company's platforms and services, including Google Duo, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. Going forward, the company plans to deploy AV1 support to "the whole range of Google's video applications and services." Although Frost didn't explicitly mention the names of the applications and services that will get AV1 codec support in the near future, a slide shown during the discussion highlighted that AV1 support will soon make its way to Google Photos, Meet, Stadia, and TV. Sadly, the discussion didn't highlight how and when Google plans on deploying AV1 support on the aforementioned services.

Along with Google, the panel discussion included representatives from Intel, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, and Tencent, who talked about how the respective companies plan on deploying AV1 support to their various products and services. If you're interested in learning more about AV1 commercial deployment, you can check out the panel discussion by following the link below. Do note that you will have to create an account on IBC in order to watch the discussion. To learn more about the AV1 codec, you can check out our detailed explainer by following this link.