Who wants to see a live stream of baby pugs running around in 4K on YouTube? What about some live fast-action extreme sports footage or sharper concert streams with UHD flair? YouTube announced on Wednesday that it’s taking its 4K play further, this time with a rollout of 4K live streaming for both 360-degree videos and standard videos.
This will be good news to consumers who shelled out for spanking new 4K TVs during all those Black Friday Week sales and are looking for more content. Final numbers are still being determined by research firms on how those particular kinds of sets sold during the week, but the Consumer Technology Association reports that televisions in general topped the list of consumer tech buys.
Back in 2010, YouTube originally enabled 4K video support and since then, it says millions of videos have been uploaded at that resolution.
“Supporting this new format will let creators and partners stream incredibly high-resolution video, and let viewers enjoy the clearest picture possible when watching a live stream on 4K-supported devices,” YouTube Senior Product Manager Kurt Wilms writes in a blog. “The image quality is just mind-blowing on screens that support it, and in 360 degrees … the clarity can truly transport you.”
Live encoder settings, bitrates, and resolutions are posted here on YouTube’s help page.