Back in March when the coronavirus pandemic was starting to become rather widespread and had begun turning into something that most people felt needed to be dealt with in some way, thereby resulting in lockdowns and quarantines, governments started to worry about the impact this would have on the world.
For one thing, more people would be at home which meant that streaming was going to become more common, something that most people would not think is much of a problem but the fact of the matter is that there are actually a number of different problems associated with this sort of thing all in all. Streaming uses up a lot of bandwidth which could overload the system if too many people are doing it at the same time. This is why Netflix and YouTube as well as other streaming platforms began to reduce the maximum quality of the streams you could watch.
Netflix has now started to go back to the regular streaming quality that we all know and love, and this is sparking some pretty harsh criticism for YouTube in general and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that the video search giant has only seemed to put a cap on video quality in India. India is an emerging market but it only has 15% of YouTube’s global audience which means that throttling speeds there would really not do much to impact the wider internet infrastructure.
YouTube was accused of making India suffer without really addressing the issue in parts of the world where it finds a larger percentage of its users, and now that Netflix has gone back to regular streaming quality people are waiting to see what YouTube’s excuse will be. The crucial difference is that in other countries the default streaming setting became 480p but users still had the option to go for higher quality streaming.
In India on the other hand, the highest available option for all videos suddenly became 480p which is such a low resolution that it made many people start commenting on the fact that it felt like it was the year 2008 once again when YouTube was a new phenomenon and 360p was the standard resolution with 240p being reserved for slow connections and 480p being a high quality option. This clearly showed that YouTube was unnecessarily forcing Indians to watch low quality videos.
If Netflix is going back to regular streaming quality then that means YouTube can as well, and every day the streaming platform delays will deprive a massive market without there being any good reason for doing so.
Read next: YouTube ‘re-defines’ the classic definition of videos by removing 720p from the list of High Definition
For one thing, more people would be at home which meant that streaming was going to become more common, something that most people would not think is much of a problem but the fact of the matter is that there are actually a number of different problems associated with this sort of thing all in all. Streaming uses up a lot of bandwidth which could overload the system if too many people are doing it at the same time. This is why Netflix and YouTube as well as other streaming platforms began to reduce the maximum quality of the streams you could watch.
Netflix has now started to go back to the regular streaming quality that we all know and love, and this is sparking some pretty harsh criticism for YouTube in general and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that the video search giant has only seemed to put a cap on video quality in India. India is an emerging market but it only has 15% of YouTube’s global audience which means that throttling speeds there would really not do much to impact the wider internet infrastructure.
YouTube was accused of making India suffer without really addressing the issue in parts of the world where it finds a larger percentage of its users, and now that Netflix has gone back to regular streaming quality people are waiting to see what YouTube’s excuse will be. The crucial difference is that in other countries the default streaming setting became 480p but users still had the option to go for higher quality streaming.
In India on the other hand, the highest available option for all videos suddenly became 480p which is such a low resolution that it made many people start commenting on the fact that it felt like it was the year 2008 once again when YouTube was a new phenomenon and 360p was the standard resolution with 240p being reserved for slow connections and 480p being a high quality option. This clearly showed that YouTube was unnecessarily forcing Indians to watch low quality videos.
If Netflix is going back to regular streaming quality then that means YouTube can as well, and every day the streaming platform delays will deprive a massive market without there being any good reason for doing so.
Read next: YouTube ‘re-defines’ the classic definition of videos by removing 720p from the list of High Definition
