Netflix has traditionally focussed on television screens, and for good reason. Around two thirds of all Netflix hours are viewed on traditional TV sets. But that is changing fast, and internally Netflix is increasing its efforts to give mobile viewers the highest quality video possible.

After enabling users to download content to their devices, and after "donating" servers full of content to ISPs globally to reduce the lag caused by it having to push data around the world by itself, Netflix appeared at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week to tell telcos and device-makers about its next step in embracing an increasingly mobile audience.

Founder and CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings during a keynote at the Mobile World Congress. Credit:AP

In two months, Netflix will switch to VP9, the open source video codec created by Google. The codec offers higher quality images than the current industry standard, h.264. Netflix took the switch in codecs as an opportunity to rethink the way it compresses video before it is streamed.

Ioannis Katsavounidis is a Senior Research Scientist at Netflix. Katsavounidis and his team have spent the last two years developing an aggressive new compression engine that goes shot by shot through content, rather than applying the same blanket compression to an entire file. Katsavounidis credits the new technique to two unlikely bedfellows: Bojack Horseman and Barbie.