Coming back from the Demuxed ’24 conference, covered in Faultline here, where Meta presented VideoLAN’s “dav1d” AV1 software decoder running on a low-end smartphone (sub-$100) for 8 hours while decoding 720p30, we sensed a shift in the AV1 landscape. Everyone has been waiting for a hardware decoder, which only benefits a small base of high-end phones. In terms of dav1d adoption, as of March 2024, it became available to all Android devices running Android 12 or higher. Apps still need to opt-in to using AV1, but according to Google, most devices can at least handle software decoding of 720p 30fps video. This marks a significant step toward the universal adoption of AV1 in both the mobile and TV markets. We…