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iPad Pro Netflix in 4K

R

rambosamboo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hey guys,

Does anyone know if a 4k Netflix app for the Ipad Pro is in the works? I hope so 🙂

Thanks,
rambosamboo
 
garyleecn said:
But there is no point offering 4K streaming, it is just waste of resources and bandwidth. The most they *might* offer is 2k
Click to expand...

I think you have posted this before, and I don't agree with it at all.

Firstly, Netflix provide the service in SD, HD and 4K. There is no intermediate offering.

Secondly, it is better to start with too much information and reduce down, than starting with too little. I don't know why you say "waste of resources and bandwidth". If you have a fast enough broadband connection and you have paid for the service, what exactly is being wasted?

Thirdly, 2K is still not sufficient anyway and only a fraction better than HD. 2K resolution is a DCI standard and is 2048x1080.

Finally, the vertical resolution of an iPad pro is 2048 pixels. A full 4K vertical resolution is 2160 pixels. There is hardly any difference so virtually nothing would be "wasted" considering vertical resolution. For horizontal resolution there is more of a difference of course with 2732 pixels on the iPad pro vs 3840 for 4K, putting it firmly in the middle between HD and 4K. 2732*2048 = 5.6 million pixels. 3840*2160 = 8.3 million pixels. 1920x1080 = 2 million pixels. So the iPad pro has 2.8 times the number of pixels of HD, and 67% of the pixels of 4K. For sure a proper 4K stream with intelligent downscaling would make a clear and visible difference.

I also remind others of the clear advantage Panasonic ED plasmas had when fed an HD stream vs an SD stream, and their resolution was only 853x480!
 
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jonstatt1 said:
I think you have posted this before, and I don't agree with it at all.

Firstly, Netflix provide the service in SD, HD and 4K. There is no intermediate offering.

Secondly, it is better to start with too much information and reduce down, than starting with too little. I don't know why you say "waste of resources and bandwidth". If you have a fast enough broadband connection and you have paid for the service, what exactly is being wasted?

Thirdly, 2K is still not sufficient anyway and only a fraction better than HD. 2K resolution is a DCI standard and is 2048x1080.

Finally, the vertical resolution of an iPad pro is 2048 pixels. A full 4K vertical resolution is 2160 pixels. There is hardly any difference so virtually nothing would be "wasted" considering vertical resolution. For horizontal resolution there is more of a difference of course with 2732 pixels on the iPad pro vs 3840 for 4K, putting it firmly in the middle between HD and 4K. 2732*2048 = 5.6 million pixels. 3840*2160 = 8.3 million pixels. 1920x1080 = 2 million pixels. So the iPad pro has 2.8 times the number of pixels of HD, and 67% of the pixels of 4K. For sure a proper 4K stream with intelligent downscaling would make a clear and visible difference.

I also remind others of the clear advantage Panasonic ED plasmas had when fed an HD stream vs an SD stream, and their resolution was only 853x480!
Click to expand...


Alright, let's talk through this

1. We will get back to this

2. From netflix's standpoint, if they decide to push 4K to iPad, they will need to buy more bandwidth, the stream will take more bandwidth on comcast's already busy network (we all know how Comcast slows down during peak hours), and if you don't have any tools to take advantage of that extra resolution, it's s waste of public resource. And this brings us back to point 1, if Netflix really want to improve experience, they'd just offer an 2k or 1440p resolution, instead of just waste sbdnwidth on 4K. Yeah, YouTube does have both 4K and 1440p

3. Like I said, it doesn't have to be 2k, it could be 1440p, 2.5k. 2.75k 3k or whatever fits.

4. You are being ridiculous here. Yes, iPad has 2048 pixels vertically, but that is because of its aspect ratio. If you stream a 4K video to iPad pro, it would take full 2372 horizontal pixels, but vertically it will only 9/16*2372, that is 1334 pixels. The rest will be just black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. So, the 4K stream on an iPad pro will actually 2372*1334, otherwise all the pictures will be weirdly tall.... You don't want this. And this is even lower than 1440p.
So if you can't even take full advantage of 1440p, what's the point of pushing 4K?.
 
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garyleecn said:
4. You are being ridiculous here. Yes, iPad has 2048 pixels vertically, but that is because of its aspect ratio. If you stream a 4K video to iPad pro, it would take full 2372 horizontal pixels, but vertically it will only 9/16*2372, that is 1334 pixels. The rest will be just black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. So, the 4K stream on an iPad pro will actually 2372*1334, otherwise all the pictures will be weirdly tall.... You don't want this. And this is even lower than 1440p.
So if you can't even take full advantage of 1440p, what's the point of pushing 4K?.
Click to expand...

I agree about the aspect ratio but you have cropped a lot of pixels in your calculation. Horizontal is 2732 not 2372.

So just to correct your numbers, vertical would be 1536 pixels. So it is still more than 1440p. But as I said earlier, Netflix, to my knowledge have nothing inbetween HD and UHD as a service offering and it is better to start with too much and scale down than start with too little and scale up as has been shown many times with TVs like the Panasonic ED plasmas.
 
Bigger issue:
Resolutions are almost meaningless on these streaming video services because of the low bitrates. You'd see more improvement by upping the bitrate on 1080 video than going to 4K with an increase in bitrate that doesn't match the increase in resolution.

Still would be nice to choose the streaming quality independently of device resolution. The higher bitrate is usually going to look better even if you're rescaling.
 
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jonstatt1 said:
I agree about the aspect ratio but you have cropped a lot of pixels in your calculation. Horizontal is 2732 not 2372.

So just to correct your numbers, vertical would be 1536 pixels. So it is still more than 1440p. But as I said earlier, Netflix, to my knowledge have nothing inbetween HD and UHD as a service offering and it is better to start with too much and scale down than start with too little and scale up as has been shown many times with TVs like the Panasonic ED plasmas.
Click to expand...

so the first point you said, netflix doesnt offer anything inbetween HD an UHD, so they should provide 4k to your ipad?
this doesnt make any sense. if you are the business owner, if you really want to offer "higher quality" video to ipad pro users, would you rather pay a lot more for bandwidth to push 4k that they just simply can't benefit from it, or just offer 1440p videos to everyone? remember netflix is paying for every bit it pushes out.

the second point 'it's better to start with more'. it seems to be 'true', but it is not. it is not the same case as your Panasonic.
so first, i remember reading 4k --> 1080p has 'better' quality than plain 1080p, becasue when shooting videos, not all 1080p (whatever the hell million pixels there are) have all RGB colors, but if downscale 4k-->1080p, then every pixel has all three RGB color data, therefore the picture quality is better (the improvement only lies in color, sharpness is sololy determined by resolution).
but the difference is, first networt streaming usually dont provide such high quality (color-wise) pictures, because it simply takes too much bandwidth. a bluray quality movie usually take >30gb, that's not even 4k yet. and second, even if your network is capable to receive such high bandwidth high quality streaming, there is no difference whether the downscale happens on your device, or on netflix server. that is say, for a 4k original movie, downscaling it to 1080p on netflix server and push out as 1080p will provide exactly the same quality as downscaling on your ipad while pushing out as 4k (provided they use same decoder or whatever, but the fact is, their server has more power and is usually better). so you still wont see the benefit you saw on your panasoic. and 1440p is just more effective
 
4k video exists on netflix and it would look better on the iPad Pro than a 1080p stream. That really isn't up for debate.

Yes, Netflix can make encodes specifically for the iPad Pro that will look better than downscaling a 4k encode, but that would come later.
 
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Not sure why there is any argument about whether 4K would be beneficial for iPad pro. It definitely would be beneficial. Even 4K videos on YouTube look better on a non retina mbp.
 
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