Does it make sense to offer 8K videos on YouTube? It should not be forgotten that this resolution reaches 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, which is the equivalent of 16 1080p quality monitors, which are usually the most common today. Well YouTube wants to play 8K videos on our computers, although we don't really know why.
Recently YouTube released a new video player that enabled 4K quality and a rate of 60 frames per second. At that time, 8K was already being tested, but now has made the leap to the final version of YouTube.
As can be seen in the image below, certain videos allow 8K mode to be activated. The image compression must be huge, because with my 20 megabyte connection it loads in a reasonable time… but then my computer can't move so many pixels smoothly.
We must not forget that there are no 8K monitors or televisions for sale, this resolution has only been seen so far in prototypes during electronics fairsThe iMac with Retina 5K display is the highest-resolution computer on the market, and it falls a long way from taking advantage of YouTube's 8K.
Anyway, today the amount of material shot in 8K is extremely low (even 4K hasn't become common), so don't expect to find too much video in that quality for years to come.
Here's an 8K YouTube video as an example, although it's highly doubtful that you can play it smoothly. In any case, as a curiosity I find it quite striking.
So YouTube now supports 8K video playback, a futuristic feature that proves that Google never tires of experimenting It may take years and years in using this resolution in our day to day, but the search engine brand is already prepared to offer us the highest quality in its streaming service.
What do you think of this novelty? Is YouTube ahead of its time, or is it wasting its resources on features that nobody needs these days?
