I use a 1080p monitor and what I’ve noticed is that once creators start uploading 4k content the 1080p version that I watch on fullscreen has more artifacting than when they only uploaded in 1080p.
Did you notice that as well?
Watching in 1440p on a 1080p monitor results in a much better image, to the detriment of theoretically less sharper image and a lot higher CPU usage.
I haven’t noticed anything. Would you do me a disservice and explain what I’m missing in my blissful ignorance. Make me see something that can never be unseen.
I can only imagine that they (OP) set quality settings on [auto]. That way they might have YT constantly lowering bitrates/resolution. I do not have any issues either, but I use fixed quality settings.
No, that’s not what they are talking about. Even if you set the video to 1080p and make sure that YouTube isn’t lowering it to a lower resolution, it still won’t look very good.
Whether you notice or not depends on how perceptive you are, the quality of your eyesight and also the size and quality of your display. It’s hard to notice on a low-grade laptop screen (or smaller), as well as a cheap TN panel monitor, but go beyond around 20" and use a decent enough IPS panel and those blocky compression artifacts are hard to miss.
I sit quite close to a large 1080p monitor. That’s why I notice when the bitrate is low and the video I am seeing lacks true 1080*720 pixels. Basically it’s compressed so much, that the image is noticeably worse than an image my monitor could display. That’s why when I use a higher pixel count compression, like 1440p, the compression problems don’t show as bad on the screen that will only show 1080p pixels anyways. That’s what I am talking about. On a phone or a laptop screen it will probably be less noticeable. I guess that’s why Youtube does it, it probably saves them a huge amount of bandwidth and people who want really good quality video might already have 4k displays which then get a way higher bitrate video feed anyways.
I guess the 1080p monitor size starts to be a niche. More and more people using it are on smartphones I guess so it really makes sense to have a very low bitrate.
Turns out, I have an old dumb FullHD TV that should be ideal for this experiment. So, if I watch a YT video on 1080p, I should be able to see compression artefacts that are invisible when using a higher resolution. How is that supposed to work anyway, given that the browser knows the output resolution? Will it just download a higher resolution video, drop every other pixel, and display the rest?
Yes, just like it can show a 1080p video not in fullscreen :)