YouTube app on Android allows 4k playback on lower resolution devices – Tablets and Phones – News

The problem is, bandwidth doesn’t scale with resolution alone. If you grab 720P, the audio is also of poorer quality, and you see artifacts in colors faster.

By the way, I clearly notice the difference between 720P and 1080P. Especially when you watch videos that have been recorded with good equipment. Have a look at the videos from Linus Tech Tips. With 720P and FHD there is a big difference in the sharpness of hair, for example. Especially now that Linus has a clearly visible beard.

YT has a bitrate with 4K that you would actually want with 1080P. It’s nice that they output at 4K, but I would rather have 1080P with the bitrate of 4K. Then the quality is a much better video than 4K now. The bitrate that YT uses for 4K is something like 15Mbit / s. A decent HD blu ray is 50Mbit / s. That is a huge difference where YT also wants to push extra pixels through higher refresh rates (60fps vs 24 for blu-ray for example).

That is also the reason that they started with a floatplane. YT’s bitrate is simply not sufficient to produce a really beautiful video without artifice. If you pause a video on YT with a lot of details, you will notice that, for example, by the well-known squares that we used to call JPEG artifacts.

The most annoying thing you can see about this is, for example, in GTA custom races with the colored pipes (so that every frame must always be a keyframe) or with confetti, snow or rain.

Tom Scott also made a nice video of it: https://youtu.be/r6Rp-uo6HmI

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