YouTube is experimenting with a higher-quality 1080p option for Premium subscribers.
The new “1080p Premium” preference was first spotted by Reddit users(Opens in a new window). In an email to PCMag, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed “a limited experiment in which we are offering a new 1080p Premium quality to a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers.
“1080p Premium is an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p which provides more information per pixel that results in a higher quality viewing experience,” the spokesperson added. “There are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on YouTube.”
YouTube’s standard 1080p bitrate sits between 8 and 10Mbps, and depends on depends on which video-compression codec is used, The Verge explains(Opens in a new window). Based on one Redditor’s screenshots(Opens in a new window) of the company’s “Stats for Nerds” tool, the new Premium option ran at around 13Mbps versus standard mode’s 8Mbps.
Anyone who’s visited the YouTube site recently will be familiar with YouTube Premium—an ad for which appears each time you open the video-sharing page. Subscribers get ad-free playback, offline downloads on mobile, and access to YouTube Music, starting at $11.99 per month.
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Michael Kan contributed to this story.
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