Comment by mapontosevenths

It's not AV1's fault though, I'm pretty sure it's that they cheap out on the bitrate. Apple is among the highest bitrates (other than Sony's weird hardware locked streaming service).

I actually blamed AV1 for the macro-blocking and generally awful experience of watching horror films on Netflix for a long time. Then I realized other sources using AV1 were better.

If you press ctl-alt-shift-d while the video is playing you'll note that most of the time that the bitrate is appallingly low, and also that Netflix plays their own original content using higher bitrate HEVC rather than AV1.

That's because they actually want it to look good. For partner content they often default back to lower bitrate AV1, because they just don't care.