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by shmerl 1602 days ago
Didn't everyone agree to align on AV1? So that should become a non issue as its adoption progresses.
2 comments

What about all the older CPUs and GPUs out there that don't have hardware support for AV1?
Or even new ones, like the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT that had the AV1 decoder chopped off the Navi die for some inexplicable reason.
The reason is because it's harvested from a laptop chip; and in laptops, the Ryzen 5000 media engine features AV1 decode, so it's wasted die space.

Still, the 6500 XT is an awful GPU.

>the Ryzen 5000 media engine features AV1 decode

No it doesn't.[1] Ryzen 5000's iGPU is based on the older Vega architecture and has no AV1 support, so everyone like me who just bought a brand speaking new laptop with Ryzen 5000 will be screwed soon enough.

[1] https://cpufinder.com/amd-ryzen-7-5800u

Yeah, you need to wait until 6000 series. AMD really dragged their feet with APUs.
That's why I said as it's being adopted. Right now it's just the very beginning of this phase (for instance AMD just started providing hardware decode in RDNA2).

So I expect this to become a non issue at some point.

As long as they don't take it as an excuse to reduce bitrates further. It's getting pretty bad these days with macro-blocking everywhere. This practice really took off when covid started. I actually cancelled Netflix because of it. Amazon is not as bad for macroblocks, but I have run into a few shows that show macroblocks, such as Mr. Robot.
>As long as they don't take it as an excuse to reduce bitrates further.

I actually think it is easier ( comparatively speaking ) to push for improved Networking so someday bitrate becomes less of a concern. Just like what happened with Audio. Even with the state of the art VVC Encoder, you only get about 65% ( or 2.8x ) reduction in bitrate in most common cases compared to x264. 65% reduction in 20 years isn't exactly a lot. We have easily got 20x bandwidth reduction in cost in the past 20 years.

Netflix are testing with 800Gbps per box now. May be when PCI-E 5.0 is available along with higher memory bandwidth they could try 1.6Tbps per box within the this decade.

Lots of people have plenty of bandwidth. I certainly do. It's the service providers who refuse to send it. It's pretty pathetic, because if you obtain a 4k to 1080p re-encode from a third party, you will get a better picture quality than what the services send directly as 1080. They will not send a 4k bitrate stream to a lower resolution display, so it's necessary to patronize third parties.

It's only since covid that they latched onto the excuse propagated by idiots out there that the internet couldn't handle people watching video from home, and immediately jumped on it as an excuse to cut quality to save a penny. Executive bonuses all around. Clap clap.

AV1 fixes the "square blocks in dark scenes" artifacts. It just doesn't have them. So that's good news.
>Didn't everyone agree to align on AV1?

Not that I am aware of. I have more faith in that with AV2.

Judging by the list of backers, it looks like everyone who matters anyway.