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:
- 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.
- Brave browser is NOT remis in supporting HD video mode.
- 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