When YouTube tests, you have to be vigilant. A few months ago, they put 4K quality behind the YouTube Premium paywall, and after an overwhelming response from users, they reverted the change.
Yesterday, a user found a new option in the platform’s list of video resolutions. The 1080p resolution of a lifetime appeared, but also a Premium 1080p option. Now, YouTube has confirmed that 1080p Premium is a separate option for users of the paid service, but that 1080p “normal” will not lose quality.
New Premium 1080p mode will improve throughput if you don’t care about saving data
YouTube is a bit temperamental. If you upload a video at 1080p (our videos, by the way, have that resolution because we’re thinking about your data rates), it looks pretty good even on big screens.
However, if that same video has a 1440p or 4K version, if you select the 1080p resolution, the result is horrible. For this reason, many users who want to see videos well select the highest resolution, even on mobile phones, when in reality 1080p would be more than enough.
The reason is that the platform compresses the videos and there are a lot of variables to that, but since 4K has a higher bitrate, even if you don’t notice it in resolution, the video will be much better than 1080p. Of course, this also consumes a lot more data.
But of course, what would happen if the bitrate of a video was increased to 1080p? Well, theoretically and on a mobile screen, you would see the content with the same quality as when you set it to 4K, but with lower data consumption. If you see it on TV, the story changes.
Well, that being said, yesterday a user on Reddit discovered a new option called 1080p Premium which appeared above the usual 1080p and came with “enhanced bitrate” which basically means “enhanced or increased bitrate “.
YouTube didn’t make a statement until a few hours later, but confirmed that standard 1080p won’t be affected and that Premium 1080p will be just that, higher quality video for those who pay for the service.
YouTube spokesperson Paul Pennington confirmed to The Verge that this is an option available to a limited group of users and that FullHD videos will continue to be available at 24 to 60 fps. without any change for those who do not pay Premiumbut if you decide to pay, you will receive a higher rate.
Having a higher bit rate provides several improvements and actually 1080p video with very high bitrate is better than 4K video with low bitrate. Various encoding factors and so on come into play here, as well as the optimal bitrate for each resolution, but hey, you have to keep in mind that if the bitrate is higher, the video will be better.
Bitrate of Premium 1080p video
A Reddit user with access to Play Stats shared an image in which we can see a Premium 1080p video with a rate of about 13 Mbps versus 8 Mbps for the same video at standard 1080p.
Now all we have to do is wait for this to be implemented globally and when it does roll out it will be worth checking outr whether a Premium 1080p video looks like a standard 4K video and comparing the data consumed in each mode. But hey, that’ll be another movie and the good thing about it is that YouTube isn’t going to limit the experience for those who don’t pay.
