Lee Magee

The LG YouTube app runs at 1080p, but the 4k videos look fine because of the downsampling effect.  The Xbox YouTube is natively running at 4k (viewport = 3840*2160), which also means the text or font of the app itself be sharper.

23 hours ago, Mark Tiede said:

After doing a few more tests, I see that it looks like the network activity goes in spurts.  I suppose it downloads some stuff into the buffer and then doesn't do anything else while the video is being played from the buffer.

I looked up close at the screen (about a foot away) at a girl fishing in a boat in Norway as a drone passed over head.  Although I didn't have a side by side comparison, they looked the same to me whether or not it was TV Youtube app or Xbox Youtube app.  And this time, I also was getting about 115Mbps while running the TV app.  Not sure why the variability.  So many possible reasons.  But again, visually, it looks fine to me as far as I can tell without having some sort of standard test to run.

3 hours ago, Mark Tiede said:

I'm not quite following you. The youtube app definitely can specify and deliver 4k. Have you looked at the nerd stats? At least with my tv and youtube app.

On the Nerd Stats, the viewport must match the current video resolution.  If the viewport is 1920x1080*2.00, the 4k video is downsampled to that resolution.  

In fact if you play a YouTube video at 240p, 480p, 720p, 1440p the viewport will always be at 1920x1080, the screen resolution of the software. 

For example if i have a 4K PC monitor and i set the resolution to 1080p in the display option and play a 4k YouTube video, the stats will say "Viewport 1920x1080 ... Current / Optimal Res 3840x2160. 

37 minutes ago, Mark Tiede said:

It might just be the app.  Make sure you specify you want 4k in the app (I THINK you can do that).  I seem to recall youtube doing something similar to me and I just put it to 4k instead of "auto".  Then the Nerd Stats actually showed that it was doing 4k. It might also be that your network connection doesn't have enough throughput.  I've read that on many of the TVs, the network card is very slow.  It was on my TV.  I switched it to use the "5g" wifi connection and it didn't have any problems.

Good luck.

I have 100mbps wired Internet, it can handle 4k . The only to way get 4k content is through an HDMI device not through the TV apps 

I just purchased the LG UHD 43UP76 advertised as real 4k however the YouTube App is running at 1080p.  Which means 4k content is downsampled to 1080p then reupsampled to fit the 4k pixel grid and the image quality is awful.

i assume WebOS runs at 1080p and simply upscales to 4k on low end 4k TVs, this same with high end TVs??