AV1 Video On Pre-M3 Macs

[Swifthawk]

I've done a lot of work making my video streaming stack as optimized as possible for most use cases, but a friend ran into a problem with their Mac (Intel, I think) in the Safari browser. It simply refused to play in Safari, but did so in Firefox.

Here's what I've learned, which jives with our experience:
Macs made prior to the M3 chips (Intel or M1/M2 before November of 2024), do not have hardware decoding for the AV1 codec, and Safari doesn't have the software. So, to play AV1, one only needs to use a different browser like Chrome or Firefox.

I hope this helps somebody, and I hope this isn't a big inconvenience to my listeners. If anyone has input on this, I'd be grateful to hear it. Thanks!