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YouTube Accuses T-Mobile of Downgrading All Video With Binge On Program

Personally, I barely notice the Binge On quality being any lower than "HD" quality when it's on my phone. Why? Because I'm staring at a tiny screen! I have to be actively paying attention to tell the difference, which I'm typically not doing when I'm watching a YouTube video.

I would agree with YouTube that this would be a net neutrality issue if this were being forced on customers, but I can go to T-Mobile's site whenever I want and enable or disable Binge On. Personally, I think it's a net gain for me to be able to watch unlimited Netflix while the video resolution on my 5" phone is a tad lower.

If you want to look for a scam in the wireless industry, look for carriers that charge for data overages.
 
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WarHeadz said:
Correct, that's exactly the problem the article is trying to describe. It's not SUPPOSED to do that. That was never the agreement. It's only supposed to throttle their "partners" video streaming. As it stands, it's a violation of net neutrality and I encourage the FCC to pounce on them.
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TMO's FAQs clearly state that Binge On throttles (Optimizes is the word they use) non partner video when it's turned on, thereby reducing the amount of bandwidth used when watching the video. This is actually a good thing for the consumer, as they get more video for the amount of data being used. If the user doesn't want that video "optimized" they can turn off the service.

There is no violation of net neutrality in this service. TMO is offering a great service to their customers. People should just leave them alone.
 
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A good question would be, Is anything actually worthwhile to human existence being watched? If not, then why bother? If a viewer is simply passing the time of day, they could shut their eyes and go to sleep, thus attaining a higher level of personal benefit from their activity.
 
redheeler said:
Not necessarily. DVDs tend to have a lot less compression than 480p web streams, resulting in a better quality picture even at the same resolution.
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Some searching led me to experiments people have performed to determine the bitrate of various YouTube formats, and the results were always just under 1Mbps for 480P.

A DVD can have a video bitrate of up to ~10Mbps, which is significantly higher than even YouTube's 1080P bitrate.

DVDs will be using older compression algorithms so the comparison will not be 1:1, but the DVD will still show significantly less compression artifacting than any of the YouTube resolutions. Anyone who's ever actually seen a DVD should already know this.
 
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The above statement is true..

If u ever look closely on a DVD picture u can easily artifacts.. You could say that's due to screen so pixels are bigger anyway. But DVD is 480p, defiantly not HD. in fact DVD's cannot hold HD content without reducing but rate..

I know this cos i fit Euro-visions's 3 hour on a DVD.., i had to reduce bit rate to VHS quality...... Result was crap, but I just waned to see if it could be done,, so i'll never do it again ..

T-Mobile probably thought they were doing a favor to their customers.

So, some advocates believe there should be no free content to their customers ?

They may have to pay for bandwidth, it's T-Mobile service, they can do what they like. It's called "making a deal" I thought anyone who's shopped in a retail store would have known this one.
 
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ActionableMango said:
I and many others were of the opinion that T-Mobile choosing to decline to charge for streaming video and audio were not a violation of the purpose of net neutrality, because they offered it to all.

Now I hear about "partners" and evidence of throttling a non-partner, and I have switched camps. This is absolutely a violation of net neutrality.
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I'm actually confused about this. What I have seen happen is that YouTube is horribly SLOW! Not poor quality, poor speed. It buffers forever. I wouldn't care if the quality was downgraded to 480p and then I had to manually change it to a higher quality. In fact, 480p on a cell phone is more than enough especially if it comes through really fast. But hell, I can't get a 30 second video to play without 5 minutes of buffering at low quality.

Anyone know how to turn off the Binge On with an iPhone?

(I think the partners are just those that agreed to a lower quality stream by default so that their data isn't charged for, YouTube did not agree to this, but they shouldn't have a say in the default streaming quality.... I don't think)
 
its the internet people bitch about everything. Give you something free bitch, charge you for it bitch.. honestly I don't care what 90% of people think.
 
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chromite said:
There's quite the noticiable difference between 480 and 720 on my iPhone 6 Plus.

And it doesn't seem fair to YouTube that someone else is compressing their video without their consent or the customers consent, since the customer isn't agreeing to compress YouTube since it's not a partner. This makes YouTube videos look crappy when they could be 1080p but aren't.
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T-Mobile MAKES IT CLEAR when they marketed binge on. This isn't a tough concept to grasp so you re either being disingenuous or lying. One or the other.
 
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WarHeadz said:
Correct, that's exactly the problem the article is trying to describe. It's not SUPPOSED to do that. That was never the agreement. It's only supposed to throttle their "partners" video streaming. As it stands, it's a violation of net neutrality and I encourage the FCC to pounce on them.
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Superrjamz54 said:
Non-partnered content wasn't supposed to be downgraded to 480p at all.
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Yes it was. This was literally said in the announcement keynote. Damn there are some really uninformed people on this board.
 
ActionableMango said:
I and many others were of the opinion that T-Mobile choosing to decline to charge for streaming video and audio were not a violation of the purpose of net neutrality, because they offered it to all.

Now I hear about "partners" and evidence of throttling a non-partner, and I have switched camps. This is absolutely a violation of net neutrality.
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Zero rating as it's called is going to be the first real test of net neutrality it seems.
 
This crap is exactly why I'll never have a budget plan on a budget network with stupid gimmicks and a network constituency of idiots that "didn't know," or couldn't read the fine print so they're "suddenly surprised."

However YouTube has a case. T-Mobile should only throttle signed-on binge watch partners.
 
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I've noticed a significant improvement in my wireless data performance ever since I started pushing all my internet traffic through my VPN. The more wireless carriers manage data, the more end user will start finding ways around it.
 
kildraik said:
This crap is exactly why I'll never have a budget plan on a budget network with stupid gimmicks and a network constituency of idiots that "didn't know," or couldn't read the fine print so they're "suddenly surprised."

However YouTube has a case. T-Mobile should only throttle signed-on binge watch partners.
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It's moronic posts with blind hatred like these that make me shake my head.
 
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niji said:
thanks for the above info.
with this info, its clear that persons who signed up for Binge On would get "optimized" (meaning throttled) video. from any place T-Mobile wants to "optimize" it.
The best that YouTube can complain about is that Binge On users may not have understood this. Youtube can not complain about anything else. And, therefore, that this is not a net neutrality issue is also clear.
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Actually, it is quite likely a NN issue and why the FCC is looking at this and other similar programs.
If I look at it from a use perspective, TMo is saying that if you want to use the Binge for our partners, you have to agree to allow us to throttle all video (so ours doesn't look bad in comparison) with no option to watch HD unless you turn us off.
Sorry, that looks like a likely NN issue to me.

Cndnmax said:
So having the option to save data by getting video that's actually optimized for a cell phone ( you do realize that 480P is the same resolution you get when watching a dvd on your HDTV right??) in addition to not being charged for a lot of select video streaming is a big big problem? You sir make no sense! The people that don't have a clue, won't see a difference- hence it being turned on by default, it's the most logical rollout. It's a great way to reduce network congestion while only benefitting customers. Okay it may steal one minute of someone's time if they do chose to turn it off, maybe those people should be compensated for their lost minute.
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It benefits those users that want to minimize data usage while at the same time throttles those users and content providers by artificially restricting the quality of the video with no option unless you turn the BO package off.

The most logical roll-out would have been to default BO on for those TMo partners while exempting non-partners.
 
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redheeler said:
Not necessarily. DVDs tend to have a lot less compression than 480p web streams, resulting in a better quality picture even at the same resolution.
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Untrue... DVD uses an old Mpeg-2 compression format that is now ancient. .h264 & .h265 compression looks infinitely better than DVD at lower bitrates and file sizes and what ever this format Tmobile is using; it's even better than that.
 
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BingeOn should have been off by default. T-Mobile is trying to encourage people to stay on BingeOn with a 3 month of unlimited data if staying on BingeOn. I have serious concerns about net neutrality and BingeOn, despite T-Mobile assurances. If people love BingeOn so much they would rush to turn BingeOn On if it were defaulted to off. Anyway, I am keeping it on for now because of the unlimited data, but I am thinking on turning it off soon. The idea is not bad, but I don't like how it has been implemented and marketed, plus the net neutrality concerns.
 
Mackie924 said:
It's moronic posts with blind hatred like these that make me shake my head.
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I'm assuming you speak with political correctness. I feel terribly sorry for you.

There is no hatred, just fact. I'd in fact entertain reason, but instead of disproving me, you shake your head.

From what I've seen:

A handful of folks do not mind, probably because they're actually aware of what they signed up for.

The vast majority (from this forum alone) are shocked, angry, and defensive... These are the idiots where there were surprises; and the unsurprising fact these people didn't read the fine print. It's easy to dazzle people. Marketing works.

My generalisation stands firm.

YouTube, on their side and their side alone (not including the consumer, because they signed up for quality throttling), has a case. The logistics are neither here nor there, because no case has been officiated yet.

My opinion stands firm.
 
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rdlink said:
TMO's FAQs clearly state that Binge On throttles (Optimizes is the word they use) non partner video when it's turned on, thereby reducing the amount of bandwidth used when watching the video. This is actually a good thing for the consumer, as they get more video for the amount of data being used. If the user doesn't want that video "optimized" they can turn off the service.

There is no violation of net netrality in this service. TMO is offering a great service to their customers. People should just leave them alone.
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Heck I bet the majority of the NN complainers don't even use TMO. I agree with you, it was clear from the beginning (when it was announced) how it would work. It only stands to benefit the users and lower their data usage (a good thing), and honestly works well. And the best part, it's up to every user to leave it on or disable it if they choose to.
 
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I would certainly not mind having 480p videos for free on my phone.

Worst thing is, YouTube doesn't tell anyone but they're doing the same, because I can't decide the quality of my YouTube videos on my iPhone. Otherwise I would have busted my 3 GB cap easily.
 
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