Netflix’s AV1 Journey: From Android to TVs and Beyond

I imagine that's a big part of the drive behind discontinuing Chromecast support..

https://www.androidcentral.com/streaming-tv/chromecast/netfl...

I doubt that. Netflix has an app on TVs as old as 8-10 years now. SoCs in such TVs aren't enough to decode AV1. They're stuck with H.264 for a long time.

Nah, that's more "we can't get ad injection working on the old Chromecast client" because it still works on early Chromecasts for ad-free plans.

I can't figure out an answer to why they'd do this. They're still supporting their custom Chromecast "receiver" app (for now?), which is a standard HTML app. But now they're detecting the Chromecast-capable device model, looking it up in an allowlist, then conditionally showing the device in the Netflix App's Cast UI.

This would mean if you have a new device and an old device in the same network the Netflix app might show only your old device! What?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what they've done here?