April 5, 2026
Decode the drama
Demonstrating Real Time AV2 Decoding on Consumer Laptops
Cool demo, but commenters say it’s a draft, light on facts, and years from your TV
TLDR: AV2 just played in real time on everyday laptops via VLC and a custom Chrome build—proof it works, not proof it’s ready. Commenters cheered the demo but slammed the draft status, missing performance details, and warned real adoption won’t happen until hardware and TVs support it, likely years away.
At CES 2026, AOMedia’s next‑gen video format AV2 got a flashy debut: Google showed YouTube streaming in Chrome on a gaming laptop, and VLC ran real‑time playback on a Mac using a plugin and the reference decoder. Translation for civilians: the new codec played smoothly on normal laptops—no fancy gear. Sounds huge, right? The comments lit up with “yes, but…” energy.
One camp is excited but blindsided. “Huh, I didn’t know AV2 was out,” said one, echoing the crowd that missed the memo. Then the skeptics rolled in. User ksec hit the brakes: it’s a draft spec, not final, and “nowhere near finished.” Others, like drob518, wanted receipts: how much smaller are these files, how hard does it hit your CPU, and is any of this hardware‑accelerated? The demo used reference software and even a custom Chrome build—aka proof‑of‑concept, not consumer reality.
Meanwhile, the adoption doomers cracked jokes. noodlesUK basically waved from the future: “See you in a few years,” pointing out we only just got comfortable with HEVC (the last big codec) and AV1 is still crawling into TVs and phones. Memes popped up about “wake me when my smart TV plays it” and “I’ll care when Netflix flips the switch.” The vibe: cool science fair win, but show us the gains, the hardware support, and real‑world timelines before we celebrate.
Key Points
- •AOMedia members demonstrated real-time AV2 decoding on consumer laptops at CES 2026 using reference implementations.
- •VideoLAN achieved native AV2 playback in VLC 4 on an ARM-based macOS laptop via a plugin integrating the AVM reference decoder.
- •Google demonstrated browser-based AV2 playback in Chrome, streaming AV2 content from YouTube at 1080p/24 fps using libavm.
- •Both demos validated end-to-end feasibility for AV2 decoding in realistic native and web environments on laptop-class hardware.
- •Results emphasize feasibility over performance; further work targets optimization, broader platform support, and production-grade implementations.