Mah

"Most 2020 and newer 4K TVs have AV1 HW decoding support.

Apple hasn’t added AV1 hardware to any of their devices yet but they are easily capable of software decoding 1080p AV1.

These smartphone chips support AV1 hardware decoding: MediaTek Dimensity 1000 and newer All Google Tensor chips Samsung Exynos 2200 Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

Streaming devices with HW AV1 support: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max Amazon Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen Google Chromecast with Google TV HD Onn. Google TV 4K Streaming Box Xiaomi TV Stick 4K Xiaomi TV Box S 2nd Gen

Roku Streaming Stick 4K 3820 Roku Streaming Stick 4K+ 3821 Roku Ultra 4800 Roku Ultra LT 4801 Roku Ultra 4802 /!\ Roku is not recommended for anime since it apparently does not support ASS or PGS subtitles

PC stuff: CPUs: Intel’s Tiger Lake (mobile 11th gen), Rocket Lake (desktop 11th gen) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. AMD’s Rembrandt (mobile 6000 series), Raphael (desktop 7000 series) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. 10+ year old desktop computers with a decent CPU are capable of software decoding 1080p AV1.

GPUs: Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series and newer support AV1 HW decoding. AMD’s RX 6000 series (except RX 6400 / 6500 XT) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. All Intel ARC GPUs support AV1 HW decoding.

People can use YouTube to check for AV1 hardware support on their current devices. Just turn on Stats for Nerds and play a video. It will show you the codec you’re using and YouTube defaults to AV1 if your device supports it. If your CPU usage is low during playback, it’s successfully using the HW decoder." also yes plex supports it afaik.

i gave it a go and didnt really find any differences between the two