Netflix 4K Streaming Comes To PC, But Only If You’re Running Windows 10 And Kaby Lake

by Brandon Hill — Monday, November 21, 2016, 04:52 PM EDT

Netflix 4K streaming support has long been in place for high-end televisions and streaming boxes, but those with [seemingly] 4K-capable hardware on the PC have been left on the sidelines. That is until today — Netflix has announced that 4K streaming is coming to the PC, but the system requirements are so confined at this point that it’s unlikely that your current rig is supported.

For starters, you’ll need to be running Windows 10 and specifically use the Edge browser. While some enthusiasts may balk at using Windows 10, this is actually the least restrictive requirement. You’ll of course need at least a 4K display at your disposal, but most importantly, you’ll need to be running a Intel’s 7th generation Kaby Lake processors due to its support for the 10-bit HEVC 4K video codec; something that isn’t found in Skylake or older Intel processors. It's not clear whether the Netflix PC app supports 4K on discrete GPUs, but it requires HDCP 2.2 and the proper codec support, which on the AMD side, requires a Polaris GPU and on the NVIDIA side requires a Pascal.

Considering that Kaby Lake is only currently available for notebooks and convertibles, finding a device that actually supports all of these requirements for 4K Netflix streaming on the PC will be quite difficult to come across. Whatever the case, Microsoft and Netflix seem to be using the arrival of 4K support mostly to hype up the upcoming release of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.

And Microsoft once again uses its promotion of Edge to carpet bomb Google Chrome, with Microsoft’s Mollie Ruiz-Hopper writing, “When streaming Netflix on Microsoft Edge you can get through at least one more full episode of Gilmore Girls than when streaming on Chrome on battery – and you know one episode can be the difference between Chris and Lorelai casually dating and being a married couple.”

So while it’s a bit disheartening to see that those running Skylake won’t be able to stream in 4K, we’re sure that you can have a better experience by watching Netflix 4K content on your big screen TV instead of huddling around your desktop monitor (or notebook) screen.

Tags: Netflix, (NASDAQ:NFLX), Windows 10, kaby lake

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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