As a sibling comment noted, I'm pretty sure Youtube keeps the original video files, so generational loss should not be a huge problem. The problem is that Yout

As a sibling comment noted, I'm pretty sure Youtube keeps the original video files, so generational loss should not be a huge problem. The problem is that Youtube is bitstarving 240p and 360p streams. That makes sense when a video is available at a higher resolution, and the 240p version is for people stuck on dial up or whatever. But in cases where 240p is the highest resolution available, Youtube should provide a high quality 240p stream!