Video streaming resolution does not reach HDX

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This comment applies to Microsoft Windows 10 Pro and Linux Mint 22.

While there is certainly a great deal about Brave browser to recommend it, and I’ve been a Brave user for several years now, both Linux and Windows, I have to say that at this late date, I am disappointed that Brave’s video streaming player is second rate if that.
Brave developers need to put less focus on payouts and other marketing scams and do something about improving video streaming resolution. And that’s a deal breaker for me - no more Brave browser until high def playback is working!!

2

You do realize it works for HDR, right? I get 4k and everything.

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Has worked perfectly for a long time. So question is, what are you doing wrong or what are you referencing?

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is working both on windows and linux and i have been using brave for months with no issues to playback :frowning:

4

First of all, I forgot to mention that I am talking about streaming video from places like Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Fandango (formerly vudu). My graphic card is not 4k capible, but it does HD and HDX just fine. For example, if I use Microsoft Edge on my Amazon Prime account, I get HDX. When I use Brave, I get SD. On Linux I don’t get HD on anything, but I believe that to be a Linux kernel shortcoming. As a result, I use Windows for video streaming. I’ve been waiting for Brave to catch up, but the developers seem more concerned about payouts on ad clicking rather than performance improvements.

5

@Todd you should focus on your issue rather than throwing out this bait to try to insult or start arguments. The issue at hand is your experience in trying to get HD video to play. You aren’t even giving much of a chance here to figure out if it’s even something on your end or within the browser before you’re sitting here throwing stones and bashing things.

Hold old is your graphics card? Do you have updated drivers? Is it HD capable?

And what are you looking at for this? Like going to Amazon Prime video it doesn’t show exact quality. It just has Good, Better, Best.

Also, do you have Graphics Acceleration enabled in your settings? Settings → System → Use graphics acceleration when available

6

The free streaming service Tubi streams at 720p

If you are on Linux the widevine DRM codec normally goes up to 720p
Or you could try Chrome on Linux which I think goes up to 1080p

7

@Todd,
Brave supports HD streaming on all platforms (that support it). @Saoiray is asking the right questions here and I would be interested in knowing the answers to them.

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Saoiray, you have a valid point. Focus should be on the issue: editorials and opinions are pretty much worthless in trying to diagnose technical issues.

Some back ground - this issue came to my attention a few days ago when I logged into one of my video streaming sites. I think it was Fandango (vudu), and I got a pop up that stated that I was not getting the resolution that I should and that I should try another browser. So I started MS Edge and navigated to the site and started a video. The browser reported the playback quality as HDX. Then, going back to Brave, the best I could get using the same video was SD. It was silly of me to leap to the conclusion that Brave had fallen behind in streaming video quality based upon this one test case. It seems more likely that my particular hardware configurations are not reporting and/or interpreted correctly by Brave or the site is not supporting Brave very well.

As a side note to that, the screen shots posted here are using YouTube videos. It should be noted that the quality settings showing up when clicking on the Gear icon are what the video is capable of and not the hardware. I base this on two things: 1 - I make short math tutorials for YouTube and the best quality that my system can produce with reasonable file size is HD 720p and that is what shows up on my videos in the YouTube quality selections. 2 - I checked out a few videos on YouTube and found some that produce the same quality list as are shown here that go up to 4k and my system does not support anything higher than HD 1080p. My point is that YouTube videos may not be the best choice for test cases.

Here’s my system info:
My computer is a Dell 3050 and it uses Intel HD Graphics 630 for GPU. I am running Windows 10 Pro fully updated, including the current driver for the GPU from Intel. The monitor is an ASUS VG279Q1A Tuf Gaming 27 inch.
As for OS settings - Under Settings>System I do not get an entry for using graphics acceleration when available. Also, in checking for HDR, all I see is Color Mode set to SDR, so I am guessing that HDR is not supported on my system. I reinstalled drivers for both the Intel 630 GPU and for the ASUS monitor but there were no changes in video playback for the test case. The test case being a movie on Fandango. After spending a couple of hours testing various settings, it seem reasonable to think that the issue is with what the website is looking at in terms of my system.

For example, I can go to my Amazon Prime account and choose an HD movie and both MS Edge and Brave show the movie in HD. A note here - while it is true that Amazon uses the Good, Better, Best notions, if you look at the gigabyte per hour rate, you can tell HD from SD. HD is somewhere around 6.8gb per hour and SD is ~1.1 - 1.6gb per hour, but I agree with you that it is not an exact quality.

This got to be a very long reply, but this whole issue has been a valuable exercise. I have learned a few things and have come to the following conclusions:

  1. Streaming video quality can be controlled by websites, and further quality can be affected by browser settings that are supported or not supported by that website. Fandango does not support Brave very well, and they do not support Linux at all.
  2. Brave browser is NOT remis in supporting HD video mode.
  3. If I really want to get better results in streaming video playback quality, I need to get newer hardware.

So, many thanks to you for your comments, feedback, and suggestions. I found them to be very helpful.

Cheers!
Todd

9

Misunderstanding here. I was saying to look in Brave’s settings. Settings → System or can just go to brave://settings/system and toggle is there. Graphics Acceleration when enabled will split tasks with your GPU and prioritize on that. If it’s disabled, then it tries to use only your CPU.

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@Todd I asked ChatGPT on that and it answered as below:

Yes, the Dell OptiPlex 3050 with Intel HD Graphics 630 is capable of playing HD video. The Intel HD Graphics 630 supports:

  • 4K video playback at 60Hz.
  • Hardware acceleration for video codecs like H.264 and HEVC (H.265), which are commonly used in HD and 4K content.

This means it can handle 1080p HD video and even 4K video smoothly, as long as:

  1. Your display supports HD resolution or higher.
  2. The playback software you use is optimized to leverage hardware decoding.
  3. The system has adequate RAM and CPU resources to support smooth playback without background processes causing performance bottlenecks.

If you experience issues, they are more likely due to software or system resource constraints than the GPU’s capability.

10

Thank you for the clarification on the settings - yes, Brave has video acceleration on.

On the display - It is an ASUS Tuf Gaming monitor model number VG279Q1a and is supposed to handle 4k. I am wondering if I have all the necessary codecs loaded for the Intel HD Graphics 630, as I have never seen anything on my screen higher than HD 1080p. This morning I did explicitly install HEVC. I will have to find out about H.264. As for PC specs, my CPU is Intel(R) Core™ i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz and I have 32gb of RAM and several hundred gigabytes of disk storage free.