YouTube Will Temporarily Limit Video Streaming Quality Worldwide Starting Today

[macduke]

480p? You were a lucky kid. I’m not sure what the resolution was, but I could have counted the pixels on the TV I had to watch. I could see them from several feet away. We’ve definitely come a long way.

Yeah, I'm in my 30s, so it was probably more like 360p on our boxy TV sets, and 160p when I first streamed on Real Player. But I still think of myself as a kid in college when 480p still dominated and 720p was just starting to become the new, popular "HD" thing. But I remember buying a 480-line TV or something like that in high school, still the old boxy kind, and it was heralded as some kind of advancement in resolution.

 

[AZREOSpecialist]

We have these multi-billion dollar companies building multi-billion dollar networks spending hundreds of millions on advertising touting how superior and pervasive their networks are... and now we don't have enough network capacity? Idiots, all of them.

 

[calzon65]

Source of this statement?

I work for a medium size U.S. FCC licensed switched voice (part of the PSTN = public switched telephone network) and data provider. About a month ago, we started to see an increase in both switched voice and data traffic.

The increase, however, has not overloaded our network, but we have seen a small number of call incomplete conditions (i.e., a fast busy or a "your call can't be completed" message). Even in normal times, there are still a tiny number of incomplete call conditions (minor outages in a national network happen with so many carriers), but that number has only increased slightly.

We, like all carriers, are continuously rerouting traffic depending on load and routing rules in our switches. When there is a dip in data traffic, most users can't perceive the very slight delay unless they are streaming. On voice calls, you do hear the call breakup or the call can't be completed.

From our prospective, we see is a material uptick in traffic, but so far, it has not caused any significant outages on our network.

 

[jerwin]

I recall reading about a "work from home service" that would pair users up with instructions to monitor each other's computer/work environment. They'd tattle if they saw you were goofing off...

It sounds like a colossal waste of bandwidth.

 

[macduke]

You also had these.

Rarely. I remember going to the movies maybe once or twice a year as a kid. I grew up lower middle class. And we would go to the cheap theater with the broken seats and cruddy projector that was playing older releases for less money. At home we had one of those really old wooden TVs that were even old when I was a kid. It had like a 19" display and probably weighed 500lbs. We didn't have cable or anything until I was in high school when we got a more modern 20 something inch TV and I started working and bought myself one and could buy myself some movie tickets, even though I couldn't afford to buy a car and my parents wouldn't let me get on their insurance because it was going to be too expensive. Fortunately I had a friend who worked at AMC and in the early 2000s with a car. I probably watched most of the movies that came out at their Thursday night employee showings, lol. Those are fond memories.

 

[jerwin]

We have these multi-billion dollar companies building multi-billion dollar networks spending hundreds of millions on advertising touting how superior and pervasive their networks are... and now we don't have enough network capacity? Idiots, all of them.

Supposedly, the europe-wide slowdown was motivated by netflix's inability to adjust its stream quality to reflect local conditions.

 

[reden]

What about people who are paying for YouTube Premium?

 

[Ericdjensen]

What about people who are paying for YouTube Premium?

Most likely included. Premium has nothing to do with the quality.
You can check now if you want. I've already noticed 4k is not available to me.

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

Once these carriers/provides get a taste of less... will they ever give what they took back to us?

Same applies to suspended civil liberties

 

[kiensoy]

480P YouTube vids don't look bad on an iPhone. There's nothing on YouTube that justifies streaming anything higher (in my opinion).
AT&T customers on the lowest tier of "unlimited data" plans have been automatically throttled to 480P for years- so it's not a big deal.

And the funny thing is that more and more YouTubers are starting to make their videos with a really wide aspect ratio to match the iPhone. I hate now having to watch videos with black bars on my iPad.

 

[bryanios]

480P YouTube vids don't look bad on an iPhone. There's nothing on YouTube that justifies streaming anything higher (in my opinion).
AT&T customers on the lowest tier of "unlimited data" plans have been automatically throttled to 480P for years- so it's not a big deal.

wow you are still living in like 2000

 

[root42]

Have you never used a 5k imac?

That's not even the best reason: Even on an iPad or iPhone I always force to at least 720p, often to 1080p for two reasons:

1. I watch a lot of tech and science channels. With 480p a lot of stuff in the videos is not very legible.
2. The step up in quality from 720p to 1080p is VERY noticable since YouTube allocates much more bitrate for 1080p. Even if the iPhone doesn't have a 1080 screen the visual quality improves by a lot due to increased bitrate.

 

[RevTEG]

Same applies to suspended civil liberties

Totally agree.

 

[jerwin]

Well, a couple of recent SNL videos popped up in my feed. 1080p is offered, but

worst case scenario: severe artifacting.
best case scenario: it looks flat.

I didn't remember it looking quite this bad.

I checked out a screencast I did a couple of months ago on CAD-- it's definitely fuzzy at 1080p, and not legible at 720p or 480p.

Youtube is a funny medium to discuss programming or CAD-- a black line, or a line of code after all is extremely easy to compress in a medium other than mpeg. Nevertheless, at the time of production, youtube offered numerous advantages, and the disadvantages were slight.

 

[IPPlanMan]

As we work through this pandemic, I think our voice and data networks will be better for it.

Why? Because it's all a ruse or because it's real?

 

[Elitegate]

"YouTube videos will default to standard definition, and if users want to watch in high definition, they will have to choose to do so from the settings menu on a video."

So there's no change at all... you can still watch your video in 720p, 1080p, or 1440p and 4K if it's available. It would make more sense to completely disable anything above 480p to be honest. But considering Google's server capacity, i don't think it's necessary.

 

[IPPlanMan]

We have these multi-billion dollar companies building multi-billion dollar networks spending hundreds of millions on advertising touting how superior and pervasive their networks are... and now we don't have enough network capacity? Idiots, all of them.

It went to the marble lobby, holiday party, team trust events, vegetation around HQ or other worthless vanity projects. You think it actually went into the network? HA!

 

[jerwin]

So there's no change at all... you can still watch your video in 720p, 1080p, or 1440p and 4K if it's available

lots of compression artifacts.

It's almost like watching the new blurays of classic doctor who. Yes-- you get every line of PAL, but it's still PAL upresed to 1080p.

 

[mi7chy]

Still have access to 8K 60fps with VP9 codec in US. So, perhaps they're only throttling inefficient AVC codec.

 

[compwiz1202]

Well, we are all stuck at home so why would you be watching on a phone and not a TV? 😛

480 is pretty bad on a TV. I'd be fine with 720, though

Would be nice if it knew what screen was being used and pick 480 vs 720.
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This is literally just an excuse to drop their bandwidth costs. The internet is holding up fine but all these companies are suddenly paying a lot more due to the massive increase in volume. They already operate on tight margins so this is eating into their profits.

There is ZERO reason for them to drop resolutions down beyond trying to save themselves from a much larger then normal backhaul bill.

I just wonder if they are lowering bills, especially places that actually have higher tiers for 720/1080/4K.
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Same applies to suspended civil liberties

If they don't voluntarily, then people need to cancel and make it known why. Just like prices of things. Consumers have all the power, but won't sacrifice.

 

[I7guy]

Seems like internet explorer does not get any love here and is stuck at 720. Haven't yet tried with edge. But maybe Apple doesn't want to break their software in some fashion with youtubes codecs.

 

[dazz87]

Then they should discount their streaming service for their paid customers.

 

[atomic.flip]

This is literally just an excuse to drop their bandwidth costs. The internet is holding up fine but all these companies are suddenly paying a lot more due to the massive increase in volume. They already operate on tight margins so this is eating into their profits.

There is ZERO reason for them to drop resolutions down beyond trying to save themselves from a much larger then normal backhaul bill.

AGREED! 100 bucks says they will re-introduce high bandwidth video for an additional “fee”.

 

[jeblis]

YouTube doesn't believe the world will run out of internet bandwidth any time soon, but is taking a preemptive measure given growing concerns at the government level.

Or in other words, "we're going to placate the world's technically ignorant leaders, even though this is BS"

 

[4jasontv]

Why? Because it's all a ruse or because it's real?

What’s a ruse?