YouTube decides to lower video quality for a month to decrease data bandwidth consumption. Here’s what changes for users
After Europe, the UK and Switzerland, now it’s the turn of the rest of the world: Google has decided to lower the resolution of YouTube videos in order to save data bandwidth, a precious commodity in this moment in which more than a billion people are forced to stay at home because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The decision has been communicated through a special page of YouTube’s online support, dedicated to updates related to the ongoing pandemic. The page states that more changes may come in the coming days: “The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is evolving day by day. Please check this page often to learn how YouTube is dealing with this situation.” The latest update is dated March 24, 2020, and it communicates this very change in how video resolution is handled. Here’s what really changed and why.
YouTube low definition: how things stand
Google communicates that “Given the global nature of the crisis, we’re expanding the measures taken last week in the EU, UK and Switzerland to the entire world.” The measures in question consist of playing videos, by default, at standard resolution. That is, 480p, a postage stamp compared to recent evolutions in the technology applied to YouTube, which has raised the resolution to 1440p and 2160p (i.e. 4K UHD). Google is gradually applying this new feature in all countries where YouTube is available.
YouTube: high definition is not gone
In reality, though, YouTube hasn’t really disabled high resolution because you can still watch videos at a resolution higher than 480p. It’s just that you have to choose it manually, by acting on the gear in the bottom right corner of the videos. Before the Covid-19 emergency, on the other hand, YouTube automatically calculated the best resolution at which to show us videos based on the connection speed it detected. But that’s not all: this resolution was dynamic and was changed “on the fly” if YouTube detected a drop in available bandwidth. All this remains in principle, but now when we play a YouTube video we’ll always see it in SD resolution. It will be up to us to choose whether to accept this compromise, and save useful data bandwidth for everyone, or to be selfish and manually raise the resolution.