What does the "HW" button do on Smarters IPTV app?

by ResplendentRodent

Using an Nvidia shield. What's the HW button do? It's normally white like the others but when I press it the stream reloads quickly and the button turns red.

I can't see any difference in terms of quality.

Iamjmax

HardWare decoding vs SoftWare decoding I believe

evertheoptimist1

I was also wondering what HW was but when I clicked it and it went to red the picture quality was notably better on my fire tv box.