Thanks to NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4000 series GPUs, the online chat platform Discord has just announced support for AV1 broadcasting capabilities. Gerard Delgado, NVIDIA’s product line manager for content creators, announced the news on Twitter.
Discord has released an AV1 codec streaming compatibility update on NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 40 series graphics cards, such as the RTX 4090. This allows users to purchase Discord’s Nitro subscription (sold separately) and stream at 8Mbps at a maximum of 4K 60fps.
Before this update, users on compatible systems could only utilise the OpenH264 video codec (provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.) or H.264 hardware acceleration with GPU boosting for improved video encoding and decoding. AV1 is considered the next-generation codec, and it is expected to gain popularity in the future since it can reproduce the same resolution and frame rate as H.264 while using half the capacity, and it is open and royalty-free.
Discord provides its customers with two membership options: “Nitro Basic” for $2.99/month and “Nitro” for $9.99/month. Users may get 4K 60fps AV1 streaming with the “Nitro” subscription. However, even free users have access to AV1-compatible content.
This is a significant development for Discord since it allows users to enjoy high-quality streaming for a fraction of the cost and bandwidth. Since AV1 is open and royalty-free, it is more accessible to a larger audience, making it an excellent alternative to proprietary codecs. As AV1 gets more commonly used, we can expect to see it on additional platforms in the future.
