The PlayOn Blog

The #1 most requested feature has been 1080p for a while now—well, we did it! To check it out, visit Settings> Video Quality and select Full HD. Your next recording will be made in 1080p.

How It Works

We size the invisible browser window to 1080p when making the recording and capture/encode it at that resolution, encoding it in H.265 to make the file size manageable. This means that you need a device capable of H.265 to watch PlayOn 1080p recordings. To see what devices this includes (most modern devices) – check out https://www.playon.tv/support/video-quality/fhd. Of note - 1080p recordings are made in the highest quality available for the selected video in Google Chrome. Some videos are lower quality than others – and while we scale them all to 1080p, we can only do what we can based on the input quality. Newer, higher resolution videos will look better than older lower-res ones, but all 1080p recordings will look better than their 720p counterpart on a big screen.

Available Only on PlayOn Cloud

Yes, it’s only available in PlayOn Cloud – there just aren’t the resources needed in PlayOn Desktop to make recordings in that quality or compress them. BUT – Desktop customers can make their 1080p recordings in PlayOn Cloud and import them into their Desktop library. They can be auto-downloaded to your PC (or Mac) with the PlayOn Cloud Downloader.

Due to the computing power required, each 1080p recording costs 3 recording credits vs. 1, but we have lowered the overall price of recording credits, and will be launching new credit-only subscription plans that GUARANTEE subscribers always get the best price on recording credits. That’s coming soon – first things first.

The 1080p Difference

And finally – does it matter? Well – yes it does. We have compared video after video side-by-side during testing. Even old grainy videos, when recorded in 1080p, look SO MUCH BETTER on the big screen. However, the difference is almost imperceptible on a phone and we don’t recommend 1080p for recordings that you plan to watch on mobile.

But you should try it out for yourself - for free. For 2 free Full HD recordings, visit Settings > Redeem Code and enter "1080p". Then head over to Settings> Video Quality and select Full HD. Now visit Channels and find 2 awesome things to record in 1080p and add them to your queue.

We hope you enjoy this new feature and send us your feedback at support@playon.tv