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5KPlayer > Video Music Player > Play 4K UHD Videos

How to Play 4K UHD 4096x2160 or 3840x2160 Videos Smoothly?

What Is 4K UHD Video?

4K resolution is the ultra-high resolution standard of digital television, movies and videos. It is four times the number of pixels of 1080p HD, thus it can render more than four times higher image definition than 1080p resolution. If you use a professional 4K video player to play 4K UHD videos on your 4K devices, you will see more detailed pictures, fresher colors, clearer movements and larger project surface visibility than the HD videos. If the 4K video playing process is DTS/Dolby compatible, it would also bring theater effects even you play 4K UHD videos on computer.

Though it is a new standard to hardware, software and media files, 4K resolution never ends with 3840 x 2160 (television standard) and 4096 x 2160 (cinema standard) pixels. Actually, the term 4K refers to any resolution with a horizontal pixel count of about 4,000, and different organizations define it differently, so 4K resolution can also be 4096 x 3112, 3656 x 2664, 4096 x 1714 or 3996 x 2160 pixels. Now that 4K resolutions are variable, how to play 4K videos like what are mentioned above without any errors?

4K vs HD

How to Play 4K UHD Videos on Windows 10, Mac and TV?

YouTube had enabled 4K video support in the middle of 2010, and other platforms including Netflix, Vimeo, Amazon, etc also follow the trend and provide 4K video resources. Besides, the number of 4K-capable hardware like smart TVs and cameras are also increasing rapidly in recent years. So, to play such 4K UHD videos quite sharper than 1080p HD videos on computer or TV smoothly, the 4K UHD player is the priority you should think of first.

How to Play 4K UHD Videos on Computer? – via Free 4K Video Player

If your Windows or Mac computer is not that old, all you need to do is to choose a qualified 4K video player for Mac or Windows 10 to play 4K UHD videos. Though the concept of 4K has emerged for a quite long time, the demand for this type of video is increasing day by day. There are more and more 4K and UHD videos available online and offline in different forms, so the 4K UHD player should also be powerful enough to handle numbers of 4K videos.

Luckily, the Hardware Accelerated video player 5KPlayer is the most ideal one we found as of now for 4K UHD videos playback.

★ First praised feature of this free 4K video player is that it is in favor of Windows and Mac 64-bit, and thus it makes up for the deficiency of a 64-bit media player on a 64-bit computer. Then, it is able to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU and 64-bit operating system to help maximize the efficiency of the 4K video decoding process as much as possible on the high-end PC. Besides, the 5KPlayer 64-bit version could also handle H.264 8K and HEVC 10bit HDR highly compressed videos much more easily than before.

★ With native support for various video codecs including HEVC/H.265, H.264/AVC, Xvid, DivX, VP8, VP9, etc, 5KPlayer easily plays numbers of MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, WMV, etc 4K UHD videos without external codec pack.

4K Video Player

★ Empowered by Hardware Decoding and Software Decoding tech, 5KPlayer can freely switch from a software player to a GPU-accelerated player to assign the 4K video decoding task to GPU and thus leave more CPU space for other processes. From 720p/1080p/1080i (MKV/MTS/MP4 etc) videos to 4K even 8K files, this free 4K UHD video player can render super smooth playback without glitches. Hardware Acceleration technology is quite useful when you are trying to play 4K UHD/HDR videos on computer no matter it is lower-power or in high configuration. From our experiment about hardware decoding vs. software decoding, turning on hardware acceleration on 5KPlayer helps play 4K videos successfully on lower-end computer and helps save 16% ~ 18% CPU usage on high-end computer obviously.

How to play steps: To play 4K UHD videos on computer with 5KPlayer, just free download this 4K video player on your computer, install and launch it. Then, you can simply drag'n drop your 4K UHD content to it to play or click on the Video icon on the main UI to choose a 4K file to play.

How to Play 4K UHD Videos on Smart TV?

A 4K TV can hold four times pixels compared to that of a 1080p TV, so a 4K-capable TV is the necessity for 4K UHD playback on TV. Because the resolution is much higher, it therefore requires more bandwidth to transmit. So, you should choose the cable HDMI 2.0 and make sure the Internet connection is strong enough to enable smooth 2160p video stream. When the 4K-compatible TV allows for a significant jump in clarity, you need 4K source materials to amplify the 4K effects. YouTube and Netflix would be the great platforms for you to play 4K UHD videos over their services.

What if you want to play 4K videos from computer to smart TV? 5KPlayer is a good way. To experience immersive 4K video, it would be better if the screen is larger. Besides a 4K video player for Mac and Windows 10, 5KPlayer is also a 4K video streaming player that helps stream 4K UHD contents from Mac/Windows to Samsung, Sony or LG smart TV.

Play 4K Videos on TV

Step 1. Free download 5KPlayer, install and launch it on your Mac or Windows. Then, connect your computer and smart TV to the same network.

Step 2. Click on "DLNA AirPlay" icon on the main UI to access the Settings window. Then, turn on the DLNA service and complete other tasks and close the window.

Step 3. Click on Library on the main UI of 5KPlayer and click DLNA Server to enter the DLNA streaming center, where you could add 4K files/folder for 4K streaming and see kinds of DLNA supported devices that 5KPlayer can stream media to.

Step 4. After adding, simply click on DLNA Share under DLNA Server to access your 4K videos. Then, choose one to play and click on the DLNA icon on the top right corner of 5KPlayer and 5KPlayer will instantly send 4K UHD video from your computer to your smart TV.

Notice: If you need more 4K UHD video resources, 5KPlayer is also a 4K video downloader for you to free download 4K UHD videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc.

To Sum Up

To play 4K UHD videos successfully, even the most powerful computer can't play a 4K video alone without the help of a 4K video player. Ranking No.1 in the 5 best free media player for Windows 10 and Mac that outshines other media players due to great speciality and versatility, 5KPlayer has attracted over 9,000,000 users worldwide. Besides, this outstanding freeware is shipped with download and DLNA features, which you can use to save thousands of 4K UHD contents from the whole Internet and stream them from computer to Samsung/Sony/LG and Apple TV. Keeping updated with the major trend of technology and media world, this omnipotent 4K UHD video player never fails to deliver you excellent 4K UHD videos playback, downloading and streaming.

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