Question Why is YouTube codec on Amazon Fire TV AVC1

[rogercw]

When I watch YouTube on my Virgin Media V6 or Firefox on my Windows 10 PC, I often see the VP9 codec. But the same video on Firefox on my Amazon Fire TV stick is AVC1, and I was wondering why.

Here's an example video:

 

[next010]

As far as I can tell neither the 1st or 2nd gen FireTV stick support VP9 hardware decoding, it's probably why it fall back to H.264 (AVC).

 

[rogercw]

You're right, I did some digging around and found that the old sticks don't support VP9 but the forthcoming Fire TV stick 4K does support VP9.
Device Specifications for Fire TV | Amazon Fire TV

 

[Trollslayer]

I worked testing STB and DTV platforms and the chips there didn't have VP9 simply because so many countries don't transmit it and that would have increased costs.

 

[rogercw]

My understanding is that the the Sky Q 1TB does not support VP9, don't know if this is also true of the 2TB box.

 

[Trollslayer]

Basically the same main chip from the same company (Broadcom) inside.
Guess where I worked for several years.