Home

Entertainment

News

AV2 could reduce the data needed to stream videos while enabling better HDR and multi-view experiences.

Germany Photography / Pixabay

YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube’s existing video format. That doesn’t guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.

What is AV2, and why should viewers care?

Think of a video codec as a way to pack a video into a smaller digital box without making it look noticeably worse.…