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is it possible to get the youtube app to play 4k content at 2160p?
i've played a few tests now and with "stats for nerds" enabled it shows that the current res is 2560x1440@30, it never goes to optimal res of 3840x2160@30.
is it actually possible to play 2160p content anywhere other than direct from a USB stick?
In terms of panel it can't really reproduce HDR due to limited dynamic range (IPS display, no local dimming), but it can still play several HDR formats. The processor can handle HEVC and VP9/VP9.2 video and HDR10 and HLG metadata formats. So it is in theory capable of playing YouTube HDR streams. Due to software/driver limitation, it currently can't do VP9.2 which is required for YouTube HDR. But it can still play the 4K streams on YouTube, also The World in HDR which is available in...
4K SDR:
313 webm 3840x2160 2160p 21981k, vp9, 30fps, video only, 314.00MiB
315 webm 3840x2160 2160p60 29805k, vp9, 60fps, video only, 457.80MiB
4K HDR:
337 webm 3840x2160 2160p60 HDR 21696k , vp9.2, 60fps, video only, 339.06MiB
And before you ask... yes, HDR streams might be of less bandwidth due to better compressibility of 10-bit.
@chenks76 wrote:so it restricts on bandwidth even though the youtube website has no problems with 2160p?
tv is connected via ethernet and the "stats for nerds" showed a 14Mbps
Hi @chenks76. Looking at the YouTube own Help page it suggests you need 20,000–51,000 Kbps for 2160p 60fps. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en-GB
@chenks76 wrote:network isn't an issue as i can stream 4k content to it from my plex server.
Plex is streaming locally, so the bottleneck is the max bandwidth of the channel used (Ethernet/WiFi) and that's 100Mbps. YouTube, Netflix, etc. use your Internet connection and if you have (let's say) 15Mbps that isn't enough for all 4K content available.
As it has been said already YouTube can go up to 20-21Mbps, and when the estimated bandwidth is just enough it usually reduces the resolution (quite heavily I must say). Netflix instead can still stream 4K content at lower bitrates (like 8-9Mbps) for example.