An HD Netflix stream has about the same bitrate as a DVD, but has drastically better image quality. Modern codecs are extremely efficient in terms of bandwidth, but that comes at the cost of computational complexity. Decoding HEVC or VP9 is far from a simple task; hardware acceleration of video decoding is absolutely crucial for power-constrained devices like smartphones and laptops.
> Modern codecs are extremely efficient in terms of bandwidth, but that comes at the cost of computational complexity
Right, but as with every codec, the cost is always heavily skewed towards encoding the stream.
>Decoding HEVC or VP9 is far from a simple task; hardware acceleration of video decoding is absolutely crucial for power-constrained devices like smartphones and laptops.
I don't believe that decoding video streams should come anywhere close to saturating a modern CPU in 2018. The hardware acceleration you mentioned isn't magic, and doesn't use any crazy tech either. Its going to be some kind of low powered ARM chip on MediaTek SoCs like the MT8581.
An HD Netflix stream has about the same bitrate as a DVD, but has drastically better image quality. Modern codecs are extremely efficient in terms of bandwidth, but that comes at the cost of computational complexity. Decoding HEVC or VP9 is far from a simple task; hardware acceleration of video decoding is absolutely crucial for power-constrained devices like smartphones and laptops.