YouTube + HTML5 Player = Stuck in 720p

Just Monika · January 14, 2015

Using Firefox (35.0) and YT's HTML5 player, every video I watch plays at 720p even though I've explicitly set the quality to 360p and selected the "I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video" option in my user settings. The issue continues even if all browser addons are disabled. It's a problem for me since I have limited bandwidth usage per month and YouTube makes up a large chunk of it.

If I use the default player, everything works fine, so the easy way out is to simply stick with the default player, but if anyone knows of any possible solution that I've completely missed, I would really appreciate your help. Thanks.

Ciccioo · January 14, 2015

i set my default resolution and player with an extension

Just Monika · January 14, 2015

I've used MagicActions before trying out the HTML5 player. I've had to fight with it in the past to stop it from forcing HD playback, but I did test with it enabled and disabled, and it doesn't seem to change anything.

The only options I have enabled with MagicActions are:

Enable Auto Wide
Bypass country, always use Worldwide/English
Advanced Features (Ratings preview, Day/Night feature)

Another bit of information: It seems that contrary to what I said in my original post, sometimes YouTube does properly use 360p playback, but most of the time it plays in 720p. The quality setting is either 360p (Auto) or 720p (Auto), as if YouTube is choosing to automatically select quality settings and ignoring my user settings to never use HD playback.