It`s 2020 and I still can`t watch 4K YouTube on almost any of my Apple stuff. Why?
On my Apple TV, iPad, Safari on Mac, I can watch 4K almost everything, from iTunes to Netflix to Disney+ to Vimeo... just not YouTube. And I can watch 4K YouTube on almost everything else, from Roku to Amazon to ChromeCast, just not my Apple stuff.
So, why, and more importantly, when`s it all just going to be fixed?
When standards and companies collide
The short answer is that, unlike HD where pretty much everyone supported H.264 for video encoding and decoding, 4K has been split between almost everyone, including Google, supporting H.265 aka HEVC, and YouTube, supporting only a competing codec, VP9.
Since YouTube won`t support HEVC and Apple won`t support VP9, their shared users and customers - us - well, we get screwed right in the middle.
The good news is, the next, next-generation codec, AV1, seems to be supported by just about everyone again, including Apple and YouTube. So, once we g...
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