Would it be possible for 4K hdr downloads of videos for premium members?

Hi all

I know everyone is still working from home but I guess they hope to be back in the office in 2021.

Given the new consoles and PC GPUs is it possible for them to offer downloads for 4K hdr videos for premium members it would be good perk and promote the site’s offering.

I guess they will need to move to new hardware to capture this and it will have to wait till after move back to the office and things get sorted with red ventures.

Still I think it would keep more people subscribing to GB if they did.

Honestly I feel like they've spoke about this and the base and need isn't there yet. Yeah new GPUs and new consoles are nice but not everyone can afford that in this pandemic world and I personally think you're over-estimating the desire for that quality in the market right now.

Yeah though outlets like digital foundry seem to be finding success through this and GB is aimed at more personality leaded content but still at “hardcore” gamers.

Yeah, on a beastcast a few weeks ago Vinny mentioned having uploaded a video in 4K and absolutely nobody noticed it was in 4K.

I think in the most recent email on the Beastcast (I think) somehow be talked about how Dirt 5 looks spectacular and crunched up compressed videos online don’t do it justice. I would imagine maybe they could upload a few of these next gen games in 4K for premium members just to see them in action. Maybe a case-by-case basis where they think a game looks exceptionally good could get a 4K download option but not every QL.

I think the last time this was brought up the answer was no. 4k videos only make sense with proportionally increased bitrate as well, which takes longer to download and is more expensive to serve. They also need all the equipment to support this, which isn't necessarily trivial (though Vinny uploaded 1 rogue 4k video to youtube apparently). Your question is only about downloading, but the video player should probably also support it, which also requires engineering to change (I'm guessing). And this is only considering 4k. 4k is honestly a pretty simple change, HDR seems to be a whole different beast.

But everything is possible if they put enough time and money into it.

Isn't the equipment to do this pretty expensive? More importantly, how much does it cost to store 4k videos?

Give it a year.

@shades846: Surely capturing in HDR would require a seperate recording?

I don't know a lot about the subject but would expect the image captured for HDR to be catered to a HDR screen, thus not useable on a standard monitor, meaning you'd need to record twice (since it's basically an on/off switch in a game engine)?

I might be betraying my own ignorance.

(Sorry if I'm making little or no sense. Been up for 24 hours and starting to feel it)

According to Steam, on their annual hardware survey, only 2.3% of their users have 4k resolution monitors. And that's Steam users, that are only PC gamers. I believe the users on Giant Bomb with 4k AND hdr most be half that, if anything.

So I don't think it's high on their priorities, nor it should be on the near future.

Give me 1080 with better framerate any day :D

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

And, as @kaname says, resolution can be whatever, if bitrate is low, it's gonna look like ass, just bigger.

I doubt it would be an easy thing to do. Then there is the storage space.

Can XBox Series S/X do auto-HDR in Youtube app? If so, problem solved!

I suspect more people have 4K TVs than 4K monitors (PC gamers are likely to lean more in favour of high-refresh rate 1440p monitor screens). That said, I don't come to GB to see the games in their absolute optimal visual format. I'm watching to see what they think of the game, or to be entertained (or both). So as long as the video is reasonably sharp, that's plenty good enough for me. I'd definitely favour higher framerate if I was choosing.

I mean 4k really doesn't add all that much to a video, I only really see a difference in games and I don't know if HDR would even work well with live studio content. HDR seems more like something for movies and games that take a lot of time to work with the video and color.