YouTube has started pushing more people to sign up for its premium version and there is a new reason that many of you might consider paying for the platform. YouTube Premium users are getting a new video quality feature that is claimed to improve the viewing experience on the mobile, web and even smart TVs.
The Premium-only feature is called enhanced bitrate 1080p video resolution which is now available as an option in the settings of the YouTube Android app and TVs.
YouTube first offered the video quality feature for iOS users and web users earlier this year and this week it has expanded its compatibility with other platforms as well. The company explains that the new bitrate feature enhances the viewing experience on YouTube if you pay for its Premium service.
It might be hard to differentiate the quality to the naked eye but something YouTube says works as advertised. It also points out the new resolution is enabled automatically based on the internet speeds available at your home or office. You can manually go to the settings (wheel icon) of any video and change the resolution. To be fair, we got a chance to test the new enhanced resolution and we couldn’t honestly see a major difference between the regular 1080p and the enhanced 1080p quality for videos on the platform.
Like we said, YouTube is pushing more people to pay for its service or watch videos with ads while using the free version. The platform has even started blocking users who enable ad blockers to bypass these ads. People have been getting a pop-up message asking them to remove the ad blockers to help YouTube pay for the creators.
The platform also gives users three chances to stop blocking ads or else their account will be locked and they can’t watch videos on YouTube. The company is likely to find it easy in most countries but it faces privacy challenges in the EU where tech companies have been reprimanded for similar actions before.
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