Playing 4K Video on 1080p TV

    My dad currently has a 1080p TV and a Raspberry Pi 2 running LE 9-10 (ish) but that has died, so it's time for a replacement.

    I want to set up a Raspberry Pi 4 for him, so he can use it now and also take advantage of 4K output when he upgrades his TV to 4K for Xmas.

    If I set up a RPi4 and latest LE/Kodi with Settings > System > Display : Resolution set to 1080p, what will happen when he plays a 4K video file? If I whitelist modes up to 1080p only, will it downscale 4k content?

    I suppose I could try this on my TV, but it is 4K and I don't know how to confirm it's actually outputting 1080p while playing...

    Cheers :)

    The is no problem with 4k decode and downscale to 1080p.

    But you may hit a problem with HDR.

    HDR is pretty common in 4k hevc files.

    HDR is pretty rare on a 1080p display.

    With this combination the video will play, but the colours will be off (it looks a bit over exposed with muted colour).

    Great!

    For that to work properly do I need to whitelist the modes the tv supports?

    I know Kodi doesn’t support tone mapping yet, so will definitely not give him any HDR10 videos until he upgrades his tv. Might run them through a Handbrake color filter if I need to.

    Quote from symean

    For that to work properly do I need to whitelist the modes the tv supports?

    It will work whatever you do. Enabling "adjust display refresh rate to match video" is recommended for smooth playback.

    You can use the whitelist, but if the display is 1080p, then it will use 1080p for gui and for video playback which is what you want anyway.