YouTube’s New Premium 1080p Option Streams Videos at a Higher Bitrate

Youtube Premium 1080p feature
Youtube Premium 1080p feature

Youtube announced it is exploring a new “1080” premium feature for its users. Although, according to the company, the option is only available to a small group of Youtube premium subscribers.

The 1080p Premium is an improved Bitrate version of 1080p which offers more details per pixel that result in a higher quality viewing experience; said by Pennington that “there is not a single changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p (HD) resolution on Youtube.

Some Youtube users claimed they saw a new video quality option in the website’s drop-down menu. According to the Reddit Forum, users find the standard 1080p resolution on the platform to be bad quality. But a higher bitrate, a statistic for the quantity of video data transferred in a given time frame—could result in better images without increasing the resolution.

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This new Premium 1080p feature could offer a 50% increase in bitrate, resulting in a better viewing experience for those willing to pay the Premium. Although, Youtube doesn’t display videos at their highest bitrate to save on bandwidth costs. This is why lower-quality videos take less bandwidth.

However, the improved 1080p option is just a test mode at this point, and Youtube may not approve it for a massive release. It makes its way out of the testing phase; only premium subscriber users will be able to access it. The premium Youtube will cost users $12/ month for an individual account & $23 for a family plan.