Indeed, on my measly FHD+ Pixel 5, I\u2019m now able to play videos at full 4K resolution with HDR. Previously, I was limited to 1080p. For those of us that watch a lot of videos on our phones, it\u2019s a welcome change.<\/p>\n
That said, the switch doesn\u2019t appear to be universal, as a few users reported not seeing the change, so it\u2019s possible Google is running a limited rollout \u2014 we\u2019ve reached out for more information.<\/p>\n
Some of you may be wondering why one would want to play video at a higher resolution than your screen is capable of. The answer is simple: video compression means that very rarely are you actually getting the claimed resolution in practice.<\/p>\n While a pixel-perfect 1080p video can<\/em> look very sharp, more often than not streaming compression means you\u2019re getting nothing near that effective resolution. YouTube\u2019s 1080p compression is notoriously underwhelming; compare a 1080p YouTube video to a 1080p Blu-ray (or even some high-end streaming services) and the difference is night and day.<\/p>\n The problem is further exacerbated if the video doesn\u2019t match your screen\u2019s aspect ratio and you pinch-to-zoom to fill up the entire display. And that\u2019s without even getting into how even the cameras videos are filmed on often don\u2019t actually output the claimed resolution either<\/a>.<\/p>\n So all this is to say that even if your display is far from 4K, and even if you\u2019re watching on a tiny screen, you\u2019ll often find playing a YouTube video at a resolution one or two tiers above your screen\u2019s native resolution will provide a noticeably sharper image.<\/p>\n You will of course have to be wary of your data usage \u2014 it\u2019s best left for people watching on Wi-Fi or with unlimited data \u2014 but for us pixel peepers, it\u2019s a welcome change.<\/p>\n Did you know we have a newsletter all about consumer tech? It\u2019s called Plugged In \u2013 and you can subscribe to it right here<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n Published February 19, 2021 \u2014 19:51 UTC <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2021\/02\/Screenshot_20210219-141654.png\")