Not using high resolution for legacy cases, would be an incentive to update devices to those which support AV1. So it only helps this. Youtube does exactly that already.
> They don't even allow 2k+ on hardware that do not have h.265 hardware decoder for that reason.
So Netflix will swap this requirement from H.265 to AV1. Problem solved.
They don't do it for a long time, because that means they will have to KILL support for TVs, Xbox and laptops that already have 4k support. They just use hardware deciding (because of DRM).
Not kill, will just reduce the resolution for them and limit them to H.264 which they support. That would be an incentive to get a device which supports AV1 sooner if someone really needs that high resolution. I'm sure all AV1 backers will do it at some point.
> They don't even allow 2k+ on hardware that do not have h.265 hardware decoder for that reason.
So Netflix will swap this requirement from H.265 to AV1. Problem solved.