News

AMD Quietly Enables 4K Netflix Support with Adrenaline Drivers

Netflix 4K Playback with AMD Hardware

Although AMD released the 18.4.1 Adrenaline drivers several days ago, one big new change is undocumented.  That is the Netflix 4K UltraHD playback with hardware acceleration via AMD graphics. NVIDIA and Intel both have hardware playback support of 4K Netflix for some time now. Intel having added it on their Kaby Lake CPU release, and NVIDIA since GeForce drivers 384.76  WHQL last year. So it is good news that AMD has finally caught up on this front as Dutch website Hardware.info has discovered. They used an AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card with the 18.4.1 drivers, showing that it is indeed outputting at 3840 x 2160 resolution. This playback requires AMD graphics, and is agnostic of CPU requirements.

What Do Users Need to Watch 4K UHD Netflix Content?

Just like with NVIDIA and Intel, 4K UHD playback with NetFlix, there are some limitations and criteria necessary. It only works on Microsoft‘s Edge browser for instance since it needs PlayReady 3.0. The 4K UHD monitor must also supprt HDCP 2.2, and the system must have an H265 decoder. Furthermore, only Netflix Premium subscribers have access to 4K UHD content. The standard plan is only capable of up to 1080p HD content, and the basic plan does not even even offer resolutions higher than standard definition (SD).

Although we have not independently verified it yet, this should also work with the recently released Raven Ridge APUs. According to Hardware.info, it is actually mentioned in the reviewer’s guide prior to those APUs release.

Ron Perillo

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

New Report Suggests Helldivers 2 Xbox Release Unlikely

As one of the most popular online games lately, it’s no surprise that Xbox fans…

14 hours ago

November Xbox Game Pass Games Revealed

We've finally reached the month of November, and that means one thing for Xbox users:…

15 hours ago

PS5 Pro Enhanced Games List Revealed

For those who haven't had it on their radar, this week we take a new…

15 hours ago

MSI Overclocker Pushes Kingston Fury Renegade RAM to Record-Breaking 12,196 MT/s

An overclocker from the MSI team has managed to push the Kingston Fury Renegade CUDIMM…

16 hours ago

NVIDIA Pushes SK Hynix to Accelerate HBM4 Production

It seems that NVIDIA wants to launch its next products ahead of time. We are…

16 hours ago

ASUS Unveils New TUF Gaming A2 SSD Enclosure with Enhanced Durability and Speed

The trend of upgrading storage from traditional hard drives to SSDs has become increasingly popular,…

17 hours ago