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Ask HN: Why does YouTube scale down quality automatically?

11 points by markus_zhang ↗ HN
Hi friends,

I have noticed that since maybe a month ago YouTube has been scaling down video quality for EVERY video played. It doesn't make sense because I have a pretty good network that can play at highest quality so I guess the only reason is to scale back output.

Have you experienced the same? Any solution to force 1080 without manual intervention? Thanks!

14 comments

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LewisVerstappen
Less load on their servers = cheaper infra?

The YouTube division has been trying to become profitable IIRC

markus_zhang
Could be the reason. I also found that one can setup a minimum resolution in the app but not on web.
pxanyc
Quality doesn't actually change the load on the servers (most of it is just dumb HTTP in the end). It would reduce bandwidth, but overall, bandwidth isn't really all that expensive these days.
jiffygist
Try alt. clients: Newpipe, Freetube, Invidious
markus_zhang
Thanks, prefer the web UI though.
deusum
Get one of the many YouTube extensions that allows you to change that stuff
naikrovek
you don't need an extension to manually change video quality. if it kicks you down, turn it right back up. it will obey your preference for that video.

after doing this on a few videos, it seems to stop dropping the quality automatically for me.

dyingkneepad
I tried Newpipe for a while, but it takes SO long to load every video, I lost the patience.
okdood64
I see no reason why this would address OP's concern.
breakingcups
I've had this happen on certain times and like a sibling comment I also wonder whether it's YouTube trying to shed some load in busy times. Maybe even A/B testing what user profiles would notice and switch back manually and who wouldn't care enough.

I've also seen it happen when a browser can't keep up, eg. freezes for quarter of a second due to excessive swapping or some OS thing fighting for resources.

cbsks
That has occurred for me a few times in the last few months when using the YouTube app on my iPad. I was able to work around it by using a vpn. I’m guessing that the server the YouTube load balancer chose for me was overloaded.
dunefox
On my Samsung TV I suddenly can't watch YouTube videos over 720p anymore. Neither the app nor the TV can change the quality to full HD...
pxanyc
There are multiple things at play. Clients, and devices (mobile), can change the way that HLS/DASH change the quality, some have reasonably strong specifications. Usually, this is the result of the client being unable to keep up with the quality you're trying to play against the Specification/Configurations.

See:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/http_live_streamin...

https://dashif.org/docs/DASH-IF-IOP-v4.3.pdf

markus_zhang
I'm on desktop website and pretty sure it plays perfectly even in the highest resolution, although I usually go for 1080. The problem is Youtube dumbs down the resolution for every video so I'm not sure what's happening.