Youtube to Reduce Default Playback Resolution to 480p Globally

[Tech_Dreamer]

1 hour ago, Teddy07 said:

Does anyone experience the change? My videos are still 1080p by default

Starts April according to article.

[PhantomJaguarr]

2 hours ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

FYI , They'll be throttling Console Game download speeds globally soon. read that news while i was looking for other sources for this news.

About to tell my brother who has been relying on his Xbox One S. 

[jagdtigger]

This is just yet another proof how cheapskate the companies running the internet really are. (and by internet i mean the infrastructure) If something cant handle the pressure upgrade it or replace it. There should be no 3rd option, especially not this where consumers get the short end of the stick. Imagine if Amazon or MS would say to their business customers that they wont get the computing power they are paying for because they cant provide it but still charge for it.....

[Kilrah]

Nobody designs infrastructure for "that one time where there's 10 times more demand than normal".

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

Nobody designs infrastructure for "that one time where there's 10 times more demand than normal".

If they did no one would be able to afford their internet the rest of the time.

[Lakobrija]

Is it really that much of a problem to change video res?

[jagdtigger]

10 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Nobody designs infrastructure for "that one time where there's 10 times more demand than normal".

The main problem here is that nobody designs infrastructure to handle what they sell. Most of them oversell their capacity by a pretty huge margin. Otherwise a 150/15 connection couldnt possibly dip below 15 DL and unmeasurable UL.....

[Dabombinable]

3 hours ago, Twilight said:

480p looks horrible. 720p too quite frankly. it's not the 90's anymore.

 

and i think that it's not something that "must be done". the internet is not something that can run out. it's just simple connections between computers. i really do not understand why these measures are neccesary, since my country has been on a sort of lockdown for days, and aside from my router crashing (after a reset it was fine) i've noticed no issues at all... 

Meanwhile in Australia...a fairly common site in Telstra (main ISP) pits:
 

Spoiler

 

This is why (over here at least). Note that a lot of networks with similar issues to ^that^ were re-purposed for FTTN NBN. The pits as well BTW, are prone to flooding.


Edit: Also, this article - https://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/01/worst-of-the-worst-photos-of-australias-copper-network/

[Dabombinable]

48 minutes ago, Hakemon said:

Being it starts April 1st you'd think April Fools.

This is YouTube though...they've done a lot of things that seem like an April Fools prank.

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

Meanwhile in Australia...a fairly common site in Telstra (main ISP) pits:
 

  Hide contents

 

This is why (over here at least). Note that a lot of networks with similar issues to ^that^ were re-purposed for FTTN NBN. The pits as well BTW, are prone to flooding.


Edit: Also, this article - https://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/01/worst-of-the-worst-photos-of-australias-copper-network/

And  in delimiter's efforts to be unbiased they posted this article with a whopping 5 pictures of decent looking telstra gear. https://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/17/pristine-telstra-network-photos-we-sourced-our-own/

 

There is a lot more to this than the surface issues.  If we want to replace all the pits with shiny new ones then your going to have to stump up a lot more for your internet connection.   Initial pricing for a 12Mb/s connection under the old FTTH model was $80 a month with a 50G cap. compare that to the $60 I am paying for 25Mb/s unlimited (from a premium RSP).   It's fine to point at the flaws in the current system, but remember people are both unable and unwilling to pay for the better version.

 

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/costs-balloon-in-allfibre-national-broadband-network-rollout-20171020-gz56pk

 

At an average of $23K per house a the top end is astounding. EDIT: $4400 for he average house

[TetraSky]

As long as you can manually change it, it's not so bad...

If Netflix started doing this, considering there isn't a way to manually select the quality while watching AFAK other than choosing the highest quality it can go in your settings... That would sucks and I might just cancel it. I ain't paying for potato quality.

[Letgomyleghoe]

I can get 4K60 on what would be considered a slow connection, Idk why this is such a big issue

[mockedarche]

I had to watch 480p a while back when I had to use my phone for anything internet. Gotta say on a phones screen 480p still looks pretty decent. 360p is bearable. On my desktop I like a higher resolution.

[it_dont_work]

4 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

snip

Reminds me of the few articles a year back where the nbn installers kept finding illicit drugs in cable pits.

[Letgomyleghoe]

11 minutes ago, it_dont_work said:

Reminds me of the few articles a year back where the nbn installers kept finding illicit drugs in cable pits.

Oh shit they found my secret

[suicidalfranco]

well given that unlike Netflix you don't have to pay to get the higher resolution, I give a pass to youtube for pulling the same solution

[Dabombinable]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

And  in delimiter's efforts to be unbiased they posted this article with a whopping 5 pictures of decent looking telstra gear. https://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/17/pristine-telstra-network-photos-we-sourced-our-own/

 

There is a lot more to this than the surface issues.  If we want to replace all the pits with shiny new ones then your going to have to stump up a lot more for your internet connection.   Initial pricing for a 12Mb/s connection under the old FTTH model was $80 a month with a 50G cap. compare that to the $60 I am paying for 25Mb/s unlimited (from a premium RSP).   It's fine to point at the flaws in the current system, but remember people are both unable and unwilling to pay for the better version.

 

https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/costs-balloon-in-allfibre-national-broadband-network-rollout-20171020-gz56pk

 

At an average of $23K per house a the top end is astounding. EDIT: $4400 for he average house

They wouldn't have to replace them if they were maintained in the first place.

[vanished]

https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube

 

This can (among many other useful things) override the default to whatever you want.  Make it 1080p if that's what you require.  Set it to 240p if you want to help save even more data.  You can also change default playback speed, apply filters to correct washed out videos, and much more.  Highly recommended.  While you're at it, grab an adblocker to save even more data.

 

Bonus tip: get into Minecracft videos.  Due to the nature of the graphics of the game, 720p is 100% passable and 480 may not even be a real issue tbh.

[mr moose]

51 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

They wouldn't have to replace them if they were maintained in the first place.

 

That is true. unfortunately that was never going to happen. all street pits look like that because there was no cheap way to water proof a street pit. Especially not for the first 50 years these ones existed.  Also in many of the places the water logged pits exist are areas prone to flooding (like most of Melbourne in a storm). The issue with the copper looking the way it does is because no one wants to foot the build for running new cables.   Telecom was never funded to replace cables, even being government owned unless the cable died completely they didn't have the budget.  Then they went private and had shareholders to please,  then they were forced to sell the copper network (like they are going to waste time maintaining an asset they are being forced to sell).   Australia just isn't a very conducive place for certain infrastructure, there is no business case for it.

[SADS]

A lot of people just use youtube to listen to music. I see it in my offices a lot (when I went in, i usually work at home anyway). This has probably surged as people start working at home too. So a default lower bitrate is probably a smart idea.

 

Generally, if people are bothered by a lower bitrate, then they will change it or find a way to change it by default.

Everyone that isn't bothered by it will accept it and free up the bandwidth for everyone else.

 

whilst 480p is incredibly low, you may as well low-ball it and scrape what you can from those that aren't interested in it.

Though it does make their service look a bit shitty for those not in the know.

[paddy-stone]

People can have my youtube bandwidth that I won't be using then... not worth playing 480p on a 4k screen IMO, it looks terrible. I'm not complaining to be clear, just stating that I'd rather not watch at all than that resolution. I'll wait until the situation is resolved.

[Mihle]

8 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

People can have my youtube bandwidth that I won't be using then... not worth playing 480p on a 4k screen IMO, it looks terrible. I'm not complaining to be clear, just stating that I'd rather not watch at all than that resolution. I'll wait until the situation is resolved.

You can manually put it higher resolution, it just 480p is what it automatically selects if you don't. From my understanding.

[schwellmo92]

14 hours ago, mariushm said:

I'd be fine with it if Youtube would actually use a bunch of servers to recompress the content from original source to 480p using high quality preset, not the presets which are "optimized" to be easy to be played by slow machines and so on.

 

I usually watch everything on 720p... currently using a laptop with 1366x768 resolution so no need for more than that.

You grossly misunderstand how YouTube encodes their videos. They use many different codecs and bitrates for the same resolution and the one that you play depends on what your device supports.

[paddy-stone]

2 minutes ago, Mihle said:

You can manually put it higher resolution, it just 480p is what it automatically selects if you don't. From my understanding.

Ahh I see, I misunderstood :derp

 

Thank you for correcting my thinking, I can still enjoy Youtube for a bit now then.

[PineyCreek]

HAHAHAHA, MY TIME AS A PHYSICAL MEDIA HOARDER HAS COME.  I HAVE ALL THE BITS! ALL THE PIXELS!