Will 4K resolutions and above be limited to YouTube Premium?

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youtube premium 1000x600.jpg
youtube premium 1000x600.jpg

Little remains of Youtube of the beginnings. Since the video platform fell into the hands of Google, the search giant has made and unmade many changes in order to improve its profitability. Now the possible next move, which at the moment is just a rumor, would be to limit 4K and higher resolutions to YouTube Premium subscribers, who already enjoy advantages such as viewing content without advertising.

After testing with a experiment with unskippable advertising, Reddit users reported that 4K resolution was limited on their mobile devices and that to regain the feature they were required to subscribe to YouTube Premium. A user of the social network called Ihatesmokealarms published two weeks ago a capture in which you can see the 4K resolution under the Premium model, with a phrase that says “press to update”.

Google has not provided information about it at the moment, but everything indicates that, together with the ad experiment launched in August 2022, it would have carried out another in which a few users have seen their access to limited 4K resolution to YouTube Premium.

4K resolution reportedly limited to YouTube Premium

4K resolution reportedly limited to YouTube Premium.

It is not clear which systems ended up being affected by the limitation of access to 4K, since many reported that they could continue using said resolution normally, but seeing that the majority spend mid-range or low-end mobiles and/or use monitors that work at 1080p , it is possible that they did not even realize that they have been the object of the experiment. If Google wanted to have any impact, it has had to be selective with users.

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This is added to the fact that today most of the content provided through the platform does not support 4K resolution, which is motivated by the fact that, for a long time, the majority of YouTube videos have been consumed from mobile phones. We will see if in the end the company decides to limit 4K and higher resolutions to Premium subscribers, but the current market situation means that said resolution is usable mainly on televisions, top-of-the-range computers and top-of-the-range mobile phones that are connected via Wi-Fibecause you don’t have to be a lynx to see what would happen if you consume high-resolution videos through the mobile flat rate.

Limiting 4K resolution and above to YouTube Premium subscribers could be an attempt by Google to justify the $11.99 per month price tag. Its price is higher than that of video-on-demand platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney + (at least taking the most basic plan of each as a reference).