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YouTube Will Temporarily Limit Video Streaming Quality Worldwide Starting Today

Won't effect me I don't stream.
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GIZBUG said:
Me neither, my 1 gig plan has been running full steam!
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Same here. I been downloading and uploading over 50 TB of data.
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Ericdjensen said:
So far it's limited to 1080p, which is obviously fine

Still, it'd be nice to see some evidence that it's necessary for all of these companies to be doing this
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I still get 4k.

4k proof.jpg
 
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max2 said:
People working from home don't need a lot of data or bandwidth.
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unless they're on Zoom with colleagues around the world all day, and have a partner at home doing similar, plus kids alternating online learning with movies / gaming / communicating with friends

the correct response at this time is "yup, okay - whatever it takes". no two homes / towns / countries have the exact same use-case
 
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hirsthirst said:
unless they're on Zoom with colleagues around the world all day, and have a partner at home doing similar, plus kids alternating online learning with movies / gaming / communicating with friends

the correct response at this time is "yup, okay - whatever it takes". no two homes / towns / countries have the exact same use-case
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Well said. I am reminded yet again that common sense isn’t really that common.
 
JBGoode said:
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.
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If we’re talking about broadcast or cable TV, up through most of the 90s in the US, the resolution was 480i. That means the beam from the back of the cathode ray tube scanned back and forth, exciting (lighting up) the phosphors in inside of the screen. The beam drew every other line of the picture, so it only drew 240 lines. When it finished, it went back to the top and drew the lines it skipped the first time. This was called interlacing, hence the “i” in 480i.

I think when they started developing the standard, long before I was born, they found that when they tried a progressive scan (480p) the top of the picture would start to fade noticeably by the time the beam drew all 480 lines. By drawing half the lines and then going back to fill in the gaps, the interlaced lines kept that part of the screen bright as the first lines started to fade. It looked fairly smooth to most people‘s eyes, though some people would notice a flicker.
 
Packers1958 said:
Not a big issue. I just manually change it to highest quality. I am going to push the bandwidth all the time!!!
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It is true that changing the resolution may slightly increase the bitrate; but since a 4k stream is allocated fewer bits than an equivalent stream a few days ago , the resulting picture may not be as visually pleasing as it once was. You may see artifacts; the picture may look as though it's been treated with a low pass filter.

And certain visual styles may be muted. For instance, I quite like Joe Wright's cinematography-- it's perhaps best described as "luminous." Doesn't quite come through if there aren't enough bits. And if the visuals, rather than the plot are the reason to see the film-- there's even less reason to stream it now.

You may choose to interpret this as snobbish-- and entitled. Perhaps you're right. It does feel as though my Amazon Prime subscription is less useful than before. And I'm certainly not going to buy a new streaming subscription to the criterion channel, for instance.

From a public policy perspective, then, restricting my enjoyment of the streaming services has worked wonderfully-- a slight cut in bandwidth translating into a wholeale desire to consume less.

Perhaps bittorrent will come to my aid?
 
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Great ideas here. If the resolution or bit rate is lowered, let’s just steal the content in better quality elsewhere.

Meanwhile I’m wondering why my internet connection speed sucks for the last few days. Guess we have the answer.
 
Hopefully cellular carriers will start throttling all teenagers cell phones, with the additional stress they are adding to cell networks since they are all currently out of school.

Same concept as YouTube, Netflix, et al reducing their video quality...
 
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ericwn said:
Great ideas here. If the resolution or bit rate is lowered, let’s just steal the content in better quality elsewhere.
Meanwhile I’m wondering why my internet connection speed sucks for the last few days. Guess we have the answer.
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I guess you're right. 50 Mbps down, and 72 Mbps up do seem on the slow side.
 
AZREOSpecialist said:
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.
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Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth from consumers and homeworkers alike.

Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on streaming services such as Netflix, Prime, YouTube, Apple TV & Disney as the entire world is in lockdown or heading into lockdown.

Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on videoconferencing services such as Zoom, Teams etc as 100's of millions of people work from home.

Anyone would think there was unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on gaming services & platforms run by Sony, Microsoft etc.

Oh wait, maybe this unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth is unprecedented and they are taking sensible measures to ensure people can carry on working & enjoying watching movies/playing games during this global crisis?

Do you know how many countries do not have "multi billion dollar" networks to support a surge in 4K streaming & other high bandwidth tasks?

Who's the idiot?
 
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Steve121178 said:
Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth from consumers and homeworkers alike.

Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on streaming services such as Netflix, Prime, YouTube, Apple TV & Disney as the entire world is in lockdown or heading into lockdown.

Anyone would think there was a massive unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on videoconferencing services such as Zoom, Teams etc as 100's of millions of people work from home.

Anyone would think there was unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth on gaming services & platforms run by Sony, Microsoft etc.

Oh wait, maybe this unprecedented global surge & demand for bandwidth is unprecedented and they are taking sensible measures to ensure people can carry on working & enjoying watching movies/playing games during this global crisis?

Do you know how many countries do not have "multi billion dollar" networks to support a surge in 4K streaming & other high bandwidth tasks?

Who's the idiot?
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The reduced bandwidth must have had an immediate effect.

I just did an lte Speedtest on my iphone and got 218/51.9.

Unfortunately my home internet was halved from 300/40 to 150/20.

Maybe youtube could reduce bandwidth a bit more?
 
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