Forum Discussion
Youtube and VP9 CPU decoder
We are going to put this feature request on our backlog to consider as we go forward. Our development team consider this a fairly complex issue, and want to ensure that if hardware offloading is unavailable that we shouldn't disable VP9 decoding as it risks the significant degradation of the YouTube 4K experience. For those following, this seems like an optimization for savvy users, how would you want it surfaced? Would you want a setting that you could control or a flag that you can enable / disable? We are a little worried that too many people who didn't understand might find it and cause their browsing experience harm. Please let us know below - Elliot
Elliot Kirk
With regards to your question, "Would you want a setting that you could control or a flag that you can enable / disable? We are a little worried that too many people who didn't understand might find it and cause their browsing experience harm."
In my view flags are describe as "Experiments" at the top of the edge://flags page. To me this implies that they may have bugs or may even be removed in the future.
Once something becomes a feature, it seems to me that the feature needs a setting instead of a flag. If the concern is that some users might encounter issues, then the setting could be moved behind an Advanced Settings selection. This seems to be an approach that is used in Windows and Edge Legacy.