Mate i don't want to fall out with you on this, I'm sure being a vet you've helped countless people on here but we're on completely different pages on this thread.
There's plenty of detail about the background to what I'm asking about, I didn't realise I have to justify why I'm asking. It wasn't a one liner. I'm just trying to better my understanding of a certain area of tech, isn't that what technology is all about?
People seem to need to know the ins and outs of how this works and how that works when it comes to IPTV, cable etc.
What's wrong with wanting to know how it works? What's the point in going to school or reading a book? Isn't it human nature to try to improve our knowledge and understanding?
As you want to know the rationale to asking, I'll explain a bit further:
There was a thread recently where a reseller (I think he was) claimed 99% of his streams were 4k when talking about picture quality. My understanding (as detailed in my OP) was that pixels doesn't necessarily = picture quality and that it's more to do with bit rate. So therefore his '4k' streams aren't necessarily better than a 1080 (or even 720!). Ironically this is exactly what @silver 's analogy was referring to if I've understood correctly. I've got loads of old media files and I thought it would be interesting to compare the two, if I had a means of doing so with a plugin. There's no means to an end here, I just thought it would improve my understanding and in a geeky way, be fun to mess about with.
Even though it's not what I'm talking about on this thread, I don't understand this jumping on people that ask about picture quality. In fact, why wouldn't someone want to improve picture quality? I see countless posts of people being belittled each time they venture anywhere near picture quality, why? Not everyone that's discussing this is 'stressing' about their sub, being ungrateful or disrespecting the technology (or their providers).
I think 99% of people that use IPTV know all about it's limitations and it's a very very small minority of people that have some kind of self entitlement complex to thinking their sub should be perfect 4k sly q quality. I'm just interested in how it works, that's all.
I apologise in advance if any of this comes across as brash, it's not my intention to be disrespectful in any way, I just don't understand some of the taboo around this subject as I've tried to articulate above.