5 ms·

Oh, and they also falsely show "4K" in the video quality icon, but "accidentally" play a 720p or even worse quality stream. If you manually select the 4K stream

Oh, and they also falsely show "4K" in the video quality icon, but "accidentally" play a 720p or even worse quality stream. If you manually select the 4K stream quality, then and only then will YouTube deign to show 4K to you.

CapsAdmin 3y ago
Something related to this which I find extremely frustrating is that I'm capable of watching a 4k video in my browser just fine. So if I decide to buy or rent a movie on youtube, they can only be played back at 420p. Apparently this is due to DRM restrictions, but the frustrating part is that you can pay extra money for the HD version and there's nothing telling you about this not being supported in your browser until you've made the purchase (by just allowing 420p and needing to search for why it's broken) see https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/pm0eqh/why_are_my_movies_still_only_480p_its_been_almost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/pm0eqh/why_are_my_...
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Netflix does the same thing. Actually, speaking of infuriating corporate bullshit, allow me to go on a rant about Netflix and subtitles. They give you the option to choose between like four, maybe five languages. That's it! If you want subtitles in any of the other hundred or so languages that they have available, well... no. Just no. Learn one of the four they've picked for you. If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you. You see, what actually happened, is that some too-smart UX guy at Netflix couldn't make a language picker look nice for that many options so he asked a too-smart data science (lol) guy to figure out the most common languages for each region. Here in Australia they picked English, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese because we have a lot of immigrants from those countries. I'm sure they used very clever algorithms on big data clusters to figure that out. Good job, well done. Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out. Netflix and their $500K total comp Stanford or wherever graduates couldn't. So they instructed their call centre staff to lie to their customers. Then they had someone write this idiocy: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101798 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101798 "If subtitles for a title are offered in a language but do not display on your device, try another device." Oh, oh, I'll go do that right now! Let me try my PC... nope four languages. On the TV? Four languages. Actually, I have a phone... and... oh... four languages. PS: Thai (only!) subtitles are "special" and use eye-searing HDR maximum white. Like 1,600 nits white that literally leaves green after-images etched into my retina. They have a support page and a pre-prepared set of lies for the support staff to read for that piece of shoddy engineering also.
  - dacryn 3y ago
    is it still a thing that you have to use Edge on windows to get 4k HDR, but you can't on Chrome?
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out Did they? Both Prime Video and Disney+ have very very narrow subtitle and audio language choices. > If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you. Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright? As someone who speaks multiple languages, and has the habit of watching with subtitles in the original language of the content if I speak it; otherwise default to English subtitles with original audio... none of the streaming companies have managed to handle that properly. Way too often the audio is only dubbed (often badly), or only my subtitles in my local language (French) are available, regardless of the original language of the content. I'd rather watch British movies with subtitles in English, not French, thank you very much.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      Apple TV shows something like 50 languages. More than I can be bothered to count, certainly. Are you saying it's some sort of challenge beyond the abilities of a Senior Technical Lead with total comp in the seven digits to figure out how to make a list of items more than 4 or 5 entries long? Too many megabytes of JSON to shove down the wire for more? > Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright? They definitely do not. That's not how work-for-hire translations work. You pay someone to translate your shows' subtitles for you, then you own the copyright on that work that you paid for. That's how that works. No weird region-locked silliness. You can make other languages appear by changing the entire UI language of Netflix, which then shows some other "data driven" subset of the subtitle languages. But then, the entire UI is in another language, which not everyone watching may understand. Essentially there are audio-subtitle language combinations that are impossible to achieve, no matter what. That combo may not be common enough to make any top-5 list anywhere. So if you love someone of a sufficiently small minority, or have an unusual racial makeup in your household, Netflix would rather you weren't so weird. Sit down and think about how absurd it is for the bastion of wokeness that is Netflix to discriminate this profoundly against inter-racial love. On purpose. They wrote the code to do this. Blows my mind.
- bambax 3y ago
  Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version? This isn't the future we were promised, but it sure is the future we have.
  - chii 3y ago
    > Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version? in which case, why buy it at all? A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for.
    - nusl 3y ago
      The further time goes on toward segmented streaming platforms and DRM bullshit, the deeper my piracy hedge grows. Eventually there will be a streaming service aggregation service a la Cable channels and we're back at square 1. Add to that streaming services pushing new ad schemes now that they've captured enough market share for the risk to be worth it, and we've got a great storm brewing for a resurgence in piracy and media execs going "but y?" BTW modern piracy setups are far more streamlined and easier to manage/use than modern streaming platforms. Assuming you have some tech ability anyway.
      - bambax 3y ago
        Jellyfin on a NAS is just great. You don't even need a NAS. A Pi with a large SSD attached will do fine.
      - fckthisguy 3y ago
        A half decent NAS, with Dockerised *rr is the gold standard of torrenting. I never knew it could be so painless.
    - MiddleEndian 3y ago
      >A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for. Unless you want to rewind the video without it re-buffering...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- MereInterest 3y ago
  This sort of behavior should be an open-and-shut case of false advertising. You were told that the video would be a certain resolution. You gave money as a result of that statement. You received an inferior product to the one that was described.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Isn't that fraudulent? Its amazing how an individual can commit fraud one time and its FRAUD! But a company can do the exact same thing en masse as like a business model over and over and its only ever a misunderstanding that they get a chance to correct and a gentleman's handshake. aAnd even if they didn't, it seems impossible to adjust the dial from civil to criminal as its often left in the consumers hands. Its not like there are attorneys that, like, represent the State that could exercise their legal authority to protect consumers.
    - MereInterest 3y ago
      To my not-a-lawyer understanding, it is fraudulent. Fine print is allowed to clarify an offer, but may not substantially alter the offer as originally made. I could see an argument made that a reasonable person would know an offer to be limited to supported platforms, and that the fine print clarifies which platforms are supported. To me, though, I’d draw a line between unsupported due to underlying limitations (e.g. can’t serve 4k video on a NES) and unsupported due to seller-side limitations (e.g. won’t serve 4k without remote attestation). I’d see the former as a reasonable clarification of the offer, and the latter as an unreasonable alteration of the offer.
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
        Even if it doesn't technically apply here, the larger point remains that people get handcuffs and corporations get handshakes...
        Obscurity4340 3y ago
- strombofulous 3y ago
  By the way, it is 480p. 420 is for something else :)
  - antifa 3y ago
    You guys are getting 480p? I'm only getting 240p!
Voultapher 3y ago
Enhancer for Youtube allows you to select a min quality, also great for blocking shorts.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
TheLML 3y ago
That has irked me for quite some time. I always manually select 1080p, because sometimes YT claims it's already playing 1080p, but it's obviously not and the video starts buffering anew when I select 1080p manually. Quite annoying
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  Roughly around the same time as the anti-adblocking effort, youtube started just not playing the video stream for me much of the time. I say play a video, it will start playing the audio, and the video will just be a frozen image. In unrelated news, my youtube-dl usage is way, way up.
- kroltan 3y ago
  Get the "Enhancer for Youtube" extension, among many adjustments, it does this clicking for you. I also had this issue, videos would frequently wobble down to like 240p or whatever, on a stable, high speed wired connection. It's not an internet problem since I never have to buffer when using this forced setting, so it's probably YT trying to save a few bandwidth bucks when they think people aren't looking.
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Wait, that's a Firefox-only issue ?!
- IshKebab 3y ago
  No, it does it on Chrome too.
vGPU 3y ago
I have personally noticed this many times. I’d blink and wonder if it was just my eyes going bad but nope, soon as I select HD quality manually I can read text again.
kevincox 3y ago
I haven't see this other than for brief periods during quality switching (it seems to play out the current buffer in lower quality but new chunks are downloaded at the displayed target quality). However for some reason it does often just load at a very low (sub-720p) resolution and I need to manually up the quality or it will never get to the highest quality (I'm watching on a 4k monitor with great internet and hardware decoding, 4k has never stuttered for me).
- judge2020 3y ago
  I remember them starting to do automatic lower-quality streams when this came out[0], but I'm not sure if this is still the cause for the situation. It could be a general "we see this ISP/ASN failing more often with x many concurrent 4k streams, let's throw some people on 720p and see if it helps". 0: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398929/youtube-defaults-to-lower-resolution-streams-in-the-us.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/398929/youtube-defaults-to-l...
conradfr 3y ago
It doesn't help that 720p quality seems subpar (to me) compared to some years ago.
rsolva 3y ago
Yeah, this has bothered me for a while. Switching to alternative youtube interfaces solved that problem :)

CapsAdmin 3y ago

Something related to this which I find extremely frustrating is that I'm capable of watching a 4k video in my browser just fine. So if I decide to buy or rent a movie on youtube, they can only be played back at 420p. Apparently this is due to DRM restrictions, but the frustrating part is that you can pay extra money for the HD version and there's nothing telling you about this not being supported in your browser until you've made the purchase (by just allowing 420p and needing to search for why it's broken) see https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/pm0eqh/why_are_my_movies_still_only_480p_its_been_almost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/pm0eqh/why_are_my_...

_Algernon_ 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
jiggawatts 3y ago
Netflix does the same thing. Actually, speaking of infuriating corporate bullshit, allow me to go on a rant about Netflix and subtitles. They give you the option to choose between like four, maybe five languages. That's it! If you want subtitles in any of the other hundred or so languages that they have available, well... no. Just no. Learn one of the four they've picked for you. If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you. You see, what actually happened, is that some too-smart UX guy at Netflix couldn't make a language picker look nice for that many options so he asked a too-smart data science (lol) guy to figure out the most common languages for each region. Here in Australia they picked English, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese because we have a lot of immigrants from those countries. I'm sure they used very clever algorithms on big data clusters to figure that out. Good job, well done. Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out. Netflix and their $500K total comp Stanford or wherever graduates couldn't. So they instructed their call centre staff to lie to their customers. Then they had someone write this idiocy: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101798 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101798 "If subtitles for a title are offered in a language but do not display on your device, try another device." Oh, oh, I'll go do that right now! Let me try my PC... nope four languages. On the TV? Four languages. Actually, I have a phone... and... oh... four languages. PS: Thai (only!) subtitles are "special" and use eye-searing HDR maximum white. Like 1,600 nits white that literally leaves green after-images etched into my retina. They have a support page and a pre-prepared set of lies for the support staff to read for that piece of shoddy engineering also.
- dacryn 3y ago
  is it still a thing that you have to use Edge on windows to get 4k HDR, but you can't on Chrome?
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Never mind that every other streaming app vendor figured this out Did they? Both Prime Video and Disney+ have very very narrow subtitle and audio language choices. > If you call their support, they'll gaslight you and mumble something about "copyright", which is patent nonsense. Copyright doesn't restrict Netflix from showing more translations for their own content that they made themselves. They own the copyright on it, which means, literally, that they have the right to do whatever they please with the copy. Including showing the associated subtitles to you. Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright? As someone who speaks multiple languages, and has the habit of watching with subtitles in the original language of the content if I speak it; otherwise default to English subtitles with original audio... none of the streaming companies have managed to handle that properly. Way too often the audio is only dubbed (often badly), or only my subtitles in my local language (French) are available, regardless of the original language of the content. I'd rather watch British movies with subtitles in English, not French, thank you very much.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    Apple TV shows something like 50 languages. More than I can be bothered to count, certainly. Are you saying it's some sort of challenge beyond the abilities of a Senior Technical Lead with total comp in the seven digits to figure out how to make a list of items more than 4 or 5 entries long? Too many megabytes of JSON to shove down the wire for more? > Maybe they mean the subtitles' copyright? They definitely do not. That's not how work-for-hire translations work. You pay someone to translate your shows' subtitles for you, then you own the copyright on that work that you paid for. That's how that works. No weird region-locked silliness. You can make other languages appear by changing the entire UI language of Netflix, which then shows some other "data driven" subset of the subtitle languages. But then, the entire UI is in another language, which not everyone watching may understand. Essentially there are audio-subtitle language combinations that are impossible to achieve, no matter what. That combo may not be common enough to make any top-5 list anywhere. So if you love someone of a sufficiently small minority, or have an unusual racial makeup in your household, Netflix would rather you weren't so weird. Sit down and think about how absurd it is for the bastion of wokeness that is Netflix to discriminate this profoundly against inter-racial love. On purpose. They wrote the code to do this. Blows my mind.
bambax 3y ago
Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version? This isn't the future we were promised, but it sure is the future we have.
- chii 3y ago
  > Buy a movie on YT or DVD, and then... watch a torrented version? in which case, why buy it at all? A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for.
  - nusl 3y ago
    The further time goes on toward segmented streaming platforms and DRM bullshit, the deeper my piracy hedge grows. Eventually there will be a streaming service aggregation service a la Cable channels and we're back at square 1. Add to that streaming services pushing new ad schemes now that they've captured enough market share for the risk to be worth it, and we've got a great storm brewing for a resurgence in piracy and media execs going "but y?" BTW modern piracy setups are far more streamlined and easier to manage/use than modern streaming platforms. Assuming you have some tech ability anyway.
    - bambax 3y ago
      Jellyfin on a NAS is just great. You don't even need a NAS. A Pi with a large SSD attached will do fine.
    - fckthisguy 3y ago
      A half decent NAS, with Dockerised *rr is the gold standard of torrenting. I never knew it could be so painless.
  - MiddleEndian 3y ago
    >A torrent isn't going to load as fast as what you paid YT for. Unless you want to rewind the video without it re-buffering...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
MereInterest 3y ago
This sort of behavior should be an open-and-shut case of false advertising. You were told that the video would be a certain resolution. You gave money as a result of that statement. You received an inferior product to the one that was described.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Isn't that fraudulent? Its amazing how an individual can commit fraud one time and its FRAUD! But a company can do the exact same thing en masse as like a business model over and over and its only ever a misunderstanding that they get a chance to correct and a gentleman's handshake. aAnd even if they didn't, it seems impossible to adjust the dial from civil to criminal as its often left in the consumers hands. Its not like there are attorneys that, like, represent the State that could exercise their legal authority to protect consumers.
  - MereInterest 3y ago
    To my not-a-lawyer understanding, it is fraudulent. Fine print is allowed to clarify an offer, but may not substantially alter the offer as originally made. I could see an argument made that a reasonable person would know an offer to be limited to supported platforms, and that the fine print clarifies which platforms are supported. To me, though, I’d draw a line between unsupported due to underlying limitations (e.g. can’t serve 4k video on a NES) and unsupported due to seller-side limitations (e.g. won’t serve 4k without remote attestation). I’d see the former as a reasonable clarification of the offer, and the latter as an unreasonable alteration of the offer.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      Even if it doesn't technically apply here, the larger point remains that people get handcuffs and corporations get handshakes...
      - Obscurity4340 3y ago
strombofulous 3y ago
By the way, it is 480p. 420 is for something else :)
- antifa 3y ago
  You guys are getting 480p? I'm only getting 240p!

Voultapher 3y ago

Enhancer for Youtube allows you to select a min quality, also great for blocking shorts.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

TheLML 3y ago

That has irked me for quite some time. I always manually select 1080p, because sometimes YT claims it's already playing 1080p, but it's obviously not and the video starts buffering anew when I select 1080p manually. Quite annoying

thaumasiotes 3y ago
Roughly around the same time as the anti-adblocking effort, youtube started just not playing the video stream for me much of the time. I say play a video, it will start playing the audio, and the video will just be a frozen image. In unrelated news, my youtube-dl usage is way, way up.
kroltan 3y ago
Get the "Enhancer for Youtube" extension, among many adjustments, it does this clicking for you. I also had this issue, videos would frequently wobble down to like 240p or whatever, on a stable, high speed wired connection. It's not an internet problem since I never have to buffer when using this forced setting, so it's probably YT trying to save a few bandwidth bucks when they think people aren't looking.

BlueTemplar 3y ago

Wait, that's a Firefox-only issue ?!

IshKebab 3y ago
No, it does it on Chrome too.

vGPU 3y ago

I have personally noticed this many times. I’d blink and wonder if it was just my eyes going bad but nope, soon as I select HD quality manually I can read text again.

kevincox 3y ago

I haven't see this other than for brief periods during quality switching (it seems to play out the current buffer in lower quality but new chunks are downloaded at the displayed target quality). However for some reason it does often just load at a very low (sub-720p) resolution and I need to manually up the quality or it will never get to the highest quality (I'm watching on a 4k monitor with great internet and hardware decoding, 4k has never stuttered for me).

judge2020 3y ago
I remember them starting to do automatic lower-quality streams when this came out[0], but I'm not sure if this is still the cause for the situation. It could be a general "we see this ISP/ASN failing more often with x many concurrent 4k streams, let's throw some people on 720p and see if it helps". 0: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398929/youtube-defaults-to-lower-resolution-streams-in-the-us.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/398929/youtube-defaults-to-l...

conradfr 3y ago

It doesn't help that 720p quality seems subpar (to me) compared to some years ago.

rsolva 3y ago

Yeah, this has bothered me for a while. Switching to alternative youtube interfaces solved that problem :)