But I guess more than streaming the unconverted video. Needs more bandwidth, but I think that is less expensive than power needed for real-time downscaling.
High bandwidth requires more energy from the server, and for the route as well. Scaling requires more energy at the server only, but again it isn't as much as you think.
Go to MSpaint and lower the resolution of a large picture vs raising the resolution; observe which one takes longer.
This would mean that the platform's costs for watching at the second highest resolution (e.g. 1440p for 2160p video) would be the highest.
You aren't given the option to scale above the upload resolution, nor would it matter because your computer scales the video to whatever resolution you want anyway.
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