YouTube is giving Premium subscribers higher-quality video than everyone else

YouTube’s introducing an “enhanced” 1080p HD video high quality for Premium subscribers — but it surely’s solely accessible on iOS for now, with the choice coming to net quickly. In accordance with YouTube, the brand new 1080p Premium choice is “an enhanced bitrate model of 1080p” that’s presupposed to make issues look crisper, notably with movies heavy on element and movement.

If this all sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of YouTube began testing this function earlier this 12 months and had some nervous that the corporate would nerf the prevailing 1080p choice for nonsubscribers. Luckily, the usual 1080p choice isn’t going wherever, not even for Premium members.

You’ll nonetheless get to make use of the usual 1080p choice on movies (even those with 1080p Premium). Not all movies could have the 1080p Premium choice, both, as YouTube says you gained’t see it on movies uploaded at resolutions increased or decrease than 1080p, Shorts, or in livestreams.

Though I don’t have YouTube Premium, I’m curious to know the way huge of a distinction there actually is between 1080p and 1080p Premium. As my former colleague Mitchell Clark identified on the time of the check, a variety of issues go into making movies look good, however an enhanced bitrate ought to, in idea, make them look higher, because it stuffs extra info per pixel.

Together with this perk, YouTube revealed a handful of different options coming to Premium, together with the power for customers on iOS to observe movies with family and friends members utilizing FaceTime by way of SharePlay. The platform already presents an identical function on Android, because it lets subscribers use Google Meet to co-watch movies with different folks, whether or not they pay for Premium or not.

There’s additionally a useful new Premium function that allows you to choose up the place you left off on movies throughout Android, iOS, and the platform’s desktop website. This appears particularly useful in case you’re watching one thing in your telephone and need to blow it up on a much bigger display screen, like your laptop computer. Nevertheless it additionally simply sounds good to have the ability to proceed watching one thing on the go in case you began watching it in your laptop, and vice versa.

Moreover, YouTube’s increasing its Premium queuing function to telephones and tablets, which helps you to create a listing of movies that you just need to watch subsequent. It’s additionally rolling out the sensible downloads function it began testing final 12 months. This routinely provides beneficial movies to your library when you’re related to Wi-Fi, permitting you to view them whenever you’re offline. Whereas this sounds useful whenever you’re on a aircraft or touring with no service and overlook to obtain movies prematurely, it looks like it could possibly be a little bit of a storage hog in case you don’t disable it.