Neither will Google Play Movies and TV nor Microsoft’s own Movies and TV service. Amazon Prime Video, for example, will not. As the video plays, you’ll be able to look at the cog to see the current resolution.Īs we’ve mentioned a couple of times already, there aren’t many streaming services that will play 4K content on a Windows 10 PC. Note that you might need to click on the settings button and select 4K as the preferred resolution YouTube sometimes defaults to Full HD. In other words, YouTube already has the capability to be a native 4K video player. Just go to the search bar, type in “4K video,” and you’ll be presented with a long list of qualified options. YouTube isn’t terribly picky about playing 4K video. It’s important to note that Windows Media Player, the default video player included with every copy of Windows 10, cannot play video in 4K. Download and install it, and then you should be able to play all of your local 4K video no matter the format. Probably the best choice is VLC Media Player, a free app that can play just about every video format known to mankind. As long as you have a 4K display and a relatively recent graphics card (say, one from the last three years or so), then you just need a video player that supports 4K. The reason is simple: they don’t want that lovely 4K content to be copied, and by making it impossible for a PC to play it, they take away one method that hackers might use to steal the content.īut what about all of your own 4K videos that you’ve shot on your smartphone or video camera, or that you’ve received from friends or downloaded from the internet? That’s not a problem at all. That is, most streaming services – as we said above, Netflix is one – don’t allow their customers to watch 4K content on Windows 10 PCs. One of the most challenging issues with 4K video is copy protection. How to watch 4K video that’s not copy protected It’s not quite that simple, though, and in this guide we’ll show you how to watch as much of your video as possible in 4K, including Netflix, one of the few streaming services that supports 4K video on PCs.

You’d think it’s easy enough to do – just fire up a 4K video and enjoy it in all its high-resolution glory. You want to use every pixel, not just for working and gaming, but for watching 4K video as well.

You’ve just purchased a lovely new monitor with a 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) resolution for your Windows 10 desktop PC, or you’ve just picked up a powerful new laptop with a 4K display.

How to search for 4k videos on youtube