LG has officially teamed up with companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Samsung in the Alliance for Open Media that develops the open source, royalty-free AV1 video codec.

AV1 in LG TVs
The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) was founded in 2015 to develop and promote an open source and royalty-free video codec, AV1, in response to HEVC's (H.265) botched rollout and royalty structure.

Apple joined the movement in 2018, Samsung in 2019, and LG is now also officially joining the initiative at the Promoter level.

- "We look forward to collaborating with LG on the next generation of streaming media technologies. LG's expertise in smart appliances will make them a valuable contributor to AOMedia’s projects," said Matt Frost, chair of AOMedia and director at Google.


 LG 4K and 8K TVs have supported AV1 decoding since 2020

LG TVs have actually supported AV1 hardware decoding since 2020. LG 8K TVs support YouTube's AV1-encoded 8K streams but Netflix's AV1-encoded 4K streams are still not supported on any LG TV. It is unclear if this snag is somehow related to LG not being an official member before today so we will be watching for any changes.

- "We are eager to work collaboratively to further the development and adoption of AV1-enabled innovative online video streaming solutions as a member of AOMedia. We look forward to exploring new possibilities for innovating online video across a wide range of applications," said Kim Byoung-hoon, CTO and EVP of LG Electronics.

AV1 is 20-40% more efficient than HEVC, depending on who you ask. Those efficiency gains can be translated into better video quality at the same bitrate or the same video quality at lower bitrates. VVC (H.266) is another strong contender to supplant HEVC for 4K and 8K video.

Sony, Panasonic, Philips and TCL TVs also support AV1 despite the companies not being official members of the alliance. You can see which TV models support AV1 video decoding in FlatpanelsHD's TV Database.