This smart home upgrade lets cameras share multiple streams at once without crushing your bandwidth

When the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) released Matter 1.5 last year, the update brought support for cameras and video doorbells. The CSA is now building on that support with the release of Matter 1.5.1. While it’s not a big update, it does include several quality-of-life improvements that you’ll likely find pretty handy.

The first and most notable change that Matter 1.5.1 introduces is support for multi-stream video and audio delivery. Camera streaming has been made more efficient, so a camera can deliver multiple optimized streams simultaneously. So, if you’re in a situation where multiple people are attempting to access a camera feed, multiple independent streams won’t have to be created.

The quality of these streams can also be tailored depending on the use. For example, a high-resolution stream would be used for recording or storage, while a lower resolution would be optimized for viewing on mobile devices. Overall, it’s said this change reduces bandwidth overhead, simplifies integrations, and improves reliability.”

Another interesting improvement is support for doorbell chime flexibility. A controller can now request a specific chime sound instead of playing the default sound. This means that different chimes can be played for different doorbells, users can set seasonal chimes or contextual sounds, and you can set up automations based on when a chime plays.

Some other improvements you should be aware of include support for HEIC images. The HEIC image codec offers better image quality at smaller file sizes compared to JPEG. There’s also support for HLS and DASH streaming, which offers “greater compatibility with the streaming technologies widely used by modern cloud and media platforms.” And Matter 1.5.1 introduces improved positioning and movement for pan-tilt-zoom cameras.