Watching 1080p viedos on youtube, with my 900p m14 screen

Since there is no 900p setting for Youtube Vids, and the next lowest setting is 720p, what happens if I view a youtube vid @ 1080p, will it automatically downgrade to 900p or will it mess up the whole vid, thanks

 

It will downsize it to 900p. Just try it

 

Yeah there won't be a problem. The highest resolution you can watch on a 900p screen is only 900p. The reason 720p and 1080p might look similar is because they're both still 16:9, along with 900p (1600xx900). So when you hit 1080p its only 900p really.

 

But still, 1080p looks considerably better than 720p. So if possible, use 1080p. the new youtube setting "original" often looks even better. But this is because the compression youtube uses makes lower resolutions worse than they should be. Don't believe me? Check this on original:

Life in the Garden (4k resolution)
Life in the Garden (4k resolution) - YouTube

 

This makes sense. It's a spatial resolution problem. A lossless 1080p video is as good as you can get on a 1080p monitor, assuming that your source material has infinite or at least large resolution, or exactly 1080p resolution (like a computer screen with that resolution) - but lossy 1080p could vary dramatically, and potentially has a spatial resolution somewhat less than 1080p.

If you upload 4k material to youtube, downsampling that 4k content has to happen to get it to fit on your 1080p screen. If you think your computer will do a better job of downsampling 4k content than youtube will, then you should use the 4k material. This isn't too farfetched, for a variety of reasons. Watch a bluray movie, then watch the same movie streaming in 1080p from amazon or itunes or whatever. The encode is set for 1080p pixels for both, but the actual spatial resolution of the streaming versions is dramatically lower, because of the constraint of having to ship the data across the internet in real time. Youtube is the same way. However, if you supersample 4k content to 1080p, you'll get something that's much closer to a lossless 1080p or a really high quality encode.

Image resolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If I had a 900p screen, I would much prefer 1080p content over 720p content. If you're watching full screen, you have the choice of either supersampling (downscaling) the 1080p video, or upscaling the 720p video. Downscaling is the much better choice. Conceptually, this should make sense. If I give you a 2000x2000 image and ask you to display it on a 1000x1000 screen, you at least have enough information there to saturate your 1000x1000 screen. However, if I give you a 500x500 image, you now have to make up information to stretch your image to 1000x1000.

 

Yeah, it will downgrade to 900p, but that apply to the screen and clarify of the quality only, the sound quality stay the same, unless you use the 480p or lower that the sound will also downgrade too.