Can't stream 4K content on my PC

Question

I have in the living room a PC for streaming from the Internet/NAS connected to the router.
It has trouble displaying 4K content and I don't really understand why.
These are the specs: i5 4590 CPU, 1050TI GPU with 8GB RAM and SSD drive.
The PC is connected to Samsung NU8000 TV.
Of course, I made sure to update all the drivers for all components of the system, as well as the latest W10 updates.

Initially, I checked against 4K HDR movies that exist on YouTube and it always kept stuttering or didn't work at all.
I saw in the Task Manager that the CPU reaches 98%-100% while the GPU doesn't even reach 50%.
Then, I checked through the streamer in the TV's OS the same links, and the image ran perfectly, so I'm pretty sure it's not about a communication problem with the router (which is in the room next to me).
I also checked it out with Firefox to make sure it wasn't something specific about chrome, but beyond the fact that FF doesn't really play well with the HDR YouTube movies, I saw it happening there as well.

Of course, in 1080 movies it doesn't happen, and in the vast majority of cases, not even in 1440.

It is unclear to me why most of the load falls on the CPU, while the GPU is barely used, and why a relatively inferior processor (of the TV) can run such content without any problem.

I'd love to get some enlightenment on the subject

Answer 1

While your graphics card does support VP9 decoding, depending in which kind of 1050 Ti you have, it may not support VP9 HDR. Your CPU is rather old and obviously not able to keep up. You may have more luck with non-HDR videos.

Your graphics card also supports AVC (H264) decoding, among others. It does not support HEVC (H265), another popular 4K video codec.

For video codecs your graphics card cannot help decode, you’re limited to what your CPU can do, which is probably ~2K resolution non-HDR.

When trying this video, I can confirm that both Chrome and Firefox use my Intel GPU’s decoding capabilities. It does not use the HDR stream though, because I do not have a compatible screen.

On Chrome, you can browse to chrome://gpu and inspect the diagnostic information for any hints as to why Chrome is not using hardware-accelerated video playback.

For playback of videos otherwise, you can use whatever player you want. VLC and maybe MPC-BE probably have the widest support available. Kodi and Plex are struggling with HDR, but 4K should work just fine.

You can play videos from any location your player supports, from local drives, your local network or otherwise. The network connection has to be fast enough, of course.

Do not use transcoding (using UMS or otherwise) during playback. It is a waste of resources. Instead, if you truly feel that your PC cannot play a video file as-is, convert it once to the desired format.