
YouTube to limit default video quality around the world for a month - spking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/youtube-to-limit-video-quality-around-the-world-for-a-month
======
noodlesUK
I'm still confused by all of this. Surely most video services are capable of
adapting to lower bandwidth (and congested) links very easily. I personally
have a fibre line directly to my house, and whilst the peering isn't great
with my provider (Frontier), the network is more than capable of doing
basically any video task. Why should the video bitrate be dropped because some
second rate ISPs are oversubscribing super badly? Isn't all of this totally
against the principles of net neutrality?

~~~
crazygringo
The unplanned for surge has been in videoconferencing (for work and for
school), and while yes they adapt in theory to lower bandwidth, they're
terribly affected particularly by the higher latency that tends to come with
it.

The problem isn't that your videoconferencing goes from 1080p to 360p -- it's
that it stutters and stops working for seconds at a time, so students
completely miss content, and introduces a lag that makes it impossible to have
conversations because people are always talking over each other.

While YouTube buffers ahead, so playback tends to be smooth regardless.

And clearly this has nothing to do with net neutrality, which is about ISP's
throttling types of content. This is the content provider itself. And they're
giving you the option to manually go back to hi-def.

So I hardly see what there is to complain about. YouTube is just trying to
make sure kids are more likely to have usable online classes.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _The problem isn 't that your videoconferencing goes from 1080p to 360p --
> it's that it stutters and stops working for seconds at a time, so students
> completely miss content, and introduces a lag_

Bufferbloat.

Ideally, at least for TCP applications, with perfect network congestion
control, reduced bandwidth due to streaming should only degrade data rate, but
never massively increase the latency. A slight increase is normal, but a huge
increase is not. Unfortunately, in real life, it's often the case, and this
aspect is often overlooked by vendors, developers, and sysadmins, making
things even worse than it should be.

Network hardware or software is optimized for throughput, and its performance
under heavy traffic is often not tested. One common practice is using a buffer
that is as large as possible, so that you can push the data rate to the
maximum and avoid dropping packets at all cost. This is called Bufferbloat and
it's a latency disaster. When the upstream bandwidth is saturated, the
downstream buffer keeps accepting more bytes/packets, effectively breaks the
proper feedback signal used by congestion control algorithms, so it never
kicks in in a timely manner, and the FIFO nature of the buffer means the
latency of a saturated link is always as high as the buffer size. As long as
something is using the bandwidth, the network will always be slow like a
snail. When people start having this problem, they simply blame the bandwidth-
intensive application, and set a QoS up to prioritize things like DNS and
VoIP, and to punish downloaders (and big networks usually have incrediblely
complex and elaborate rules), This appeared to "fix" the problem, but it does
not solve the underlying problem, all it does is moving the problem to the low
priority queue. Another trouble is unwanted buffer can exist everywhere, in
applications, operation systems, and underlying hardware, and since there's a
conflict between throughput and latency, and some buffers are even technically
necessary (Wireless networks are the worst offender), there's still a long way
to do to fix everything.

I am only speaking from my experience of managing small LANs, but I got most
of the information from Dave Täht and Jim Gettys, who have been working on
this issue in the last 10 years. Gettys writes extensively on bufferbloat in
his blog that states similar issues exist at a much larger scale, including
the ISP edge and backbone. Perhaps the vast majority of the case we are seeing
here is caused by a lack of bandwidth and not related to bufferbloat, but I
guess bufferbloat is still here to blame for at least 20% of the cases.

Here is a talk Dave Täht recently made:
[https://blog.apnic.net/2020/01/22/bufferbloat-may-be-
solved-...](https://blog.apnic.net/2020/01/22/bufferbloat-may-be-solved-but-
its-not-over-yet/)

And here is Gettys' blogpost: [https://gettys.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/the-
blind-men-and-th...](https://gettys.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/the-blind-men-
and-the-elephant/)

~~~
kd5bjo
> Ideally, at least for TCP applications, with perfect network congestion
> control, reduced bandwidth due to streaming should only degrade data rate,
> but never massively increase the latency

Fundamentally, TCP is designed to get _all the bits_ to their destination.
That’s great for file transfer, but not ideal for streaming video— at the
transport level, there’s no way to decouple data rate from latency because
it’s not allowed to drop anything.

UDP is the latency-prioritized transport protocol for the internet. It drops
packets that it can’t handle because they are expected to contain out-of-date
information anyway. It’s generally mote complicated to use because all of the
flow control needs to happen at the application layer.

~~~
kartickv
This is the best explanation I've read about TCP vs UDP in more than two
decades!

I like that it describes them in terms of goals ("If you prioritise X over Y,
then use..."), not mechanics like stream-oriented.

I wish more technology choices were presented in terms of the fundamental
tradeoffs in high-level goals rather than mechanics of the particular
abstraction.

------
holoduke
I wonder if the reason to lower quality is really because of being generous to
the rest of the world. That's just not Google. I am quite into the online
advertising world and I know that the current cpm/rpm ad revenue in many
premium countries went down by 30-60%. This means a way lower margin for
Google. One way to decrease the loss is lowering the total bandwidth

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I'm all for calling out Google where it's warranted, but come on, I think the
simplest explanation for this (reducing _default_ bandwidth - note it doesn't
prevent people from manually choosing HD - helps the world without costing
Google much of anything) is the correct one. Lowering their bandwidth isn't
going to make a lick of difference in their overall stock price one way or the
other.

~~~
prawn
I don't know that it's calling them out to describe a specific business reason
behind a decision. It's not unreasonable for a business to adjust to maintain
financial stability, especially for a "free" product served in exchange for
ads.

~~~
gundmc
I'm not sure it would actually save them any money at all. They are still
transcoding into the higher quality, so you don't save compute resources. The
videos themselves are served from edge CDN nodes. Through peering agreements I
doubt Google is paying much for bandwidth.

I'm not sure where this would save Google any money. It seems to just be a
helpful (if more symbolic) thing to do.

------
ponsin
It would be nice if they have a 0 pixel option. I use YouTube mostly for the
music and I let it play in the background

~~~
symplee
I think most "Lyric" videos, where the screen is a single image, or nearly the
same image, can be compressed to be almost the size of just the audio.

If not, I would second the "zero pixel" option!

~~~
close04
Youtube doesn't offer a "no video" option for free because the ToS for the
free service says you are not allowed to separate the video and audio streams.
This is to prevent free streaming on devices like Sonos since it's harder (if
possible at all) to monetize those videos. It's also why when using the free
service the app doesn't allow streaming with the screen off.

A 0 pixel video would defeat this by being in effect an audio stream separated
from the video. I always wondered why manufacturers don't just resize the
video stream to 1 pixel and use any of the device LEDs to "display" the video
thus bypassing this part of the ToS.

~~~
NoodleIncident
> Youtube doesn't offer a "no video" option for free because the ToS for the
> free service says you are not allowed to separate the video and audio
> streams.

Isn't this backwards? It seems more likely that the TOS follows the business
decision here. I believe old versions of the official mobile apps continued to
play the video with the phone screen off.

~~~
close04
I imagine the ToS were written as such in order to make sure some features can
be monetized (like offline or screen-off playback). But this just means they
would not offer any feature for free that undermines this decision. A "0px"
video would effectively turn it into an audio-only stream and be an "official"
way for others to bypass some of those restrictions. It would make streaming
to all devices that now require a Premium/Music membership, or stream ripping
(something they don't actually sue for but insist it's illegal) fair game.

------
Naac
For those who only read the title, this is actually only setting the _default_
quality to standard definition.

You can still watch 4k videos by changing the setting manually.

~~~
vorpalhex
That seems exceedingly reasonable. 4k when you need it, by a lower default.

~~~
Dylan16807
480 instead of 720 seems a bit excessive of a first-step cutback.

------
xhrpost
Is this ultimately just to free up bandwidth in areas limited by poor last
mile infrastructure? The US has some of the cheapest transit network bandwidth
costs in the world. Most ISPs can peer to YouTube(Google) for free minus the
cost of equipment/data center ports. Thus, is this just addressing the last
mile problem again, when the video finally makes it to the neighborhood and
you just have too many people on a single DOCSIS node?

~~~
op00to
A well engineered DOCSIS network can really scream. Unfortunately it’s way
cheaper to oversubscribe since 99.99% of the time no one complains.

~~~
sneak
well-engineered vs oversubscribed is a false dichotomy. A well-engineered
network _is_ an oversubscribed one.

------
swebs
And if you don't know, you can use Youtube-dl to download videos from most
sites for offline viewing.

[https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl#description](https://github.com/ytdl-
org/youtube-dl#description)

------
thedance
What is the primary source on this? None of Alphabet's mouthpieces contain
this information. I glanced at Google's own blog, various YouTube blogs,
several official Twitter accounts, and SEC filings in EDGAR. I search PR
Newswire etc.

~~~
icebraining
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9777243?p=covid19_...](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9777243?p=covid19_updates)

------
everdrive
I'm really glad to hear it. To be honest, I've always seen the race to 4k or
whatever else to be inherently decadent.

------
SeanLuke
I have noticed Youtube's landing page to be quite slow to load compared to
most other sites. I had assumed it was some stupidity in my low-bandwidth
network connection: but I now wonder if Youtube's just getting killed by all
of us staying at home.

~~~
smichel17
Add &disable_polymer=1 to the end of the url and see if it's different.

Here's an add-on to do this automatically:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-
polym...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-polymer-
youtube/?src=search)

------
sidcool
I never imagined the big G would have to worry about scalability

------
aaron695
I noticed a lot of the recent torrents are smaller than usual.

Not sure if they have regulated themselves or the sources are reduced. Or
both.

~~~
kalleboo
x265 has been gaining in acceptance, and those are noticeably smaller

------
xiphias2
It's great that I can still override it. Companies are taking away important
features, at least this stays (for now)

~~~
TomGullen
You do understand why they are doing this right?

~~~
xiphias2
I do, but I usually can't read any of the code examples and small text slides
when I don't set the videos to the highest definition :(

I wish they would use special compression for text that's not moving.

Do you have a better suggestion?

~~~
cbhl
It's totally okay to manually set the YouTube player to 4K for this use case.

For low-motion static content like a slideshow or console window, a ultra-low
frame rate usually results in acceptable fidelity while minimizing bandwidth,
but not all hardware decoders (think Chromecasts, TVs) play well with them, so
it wasn't possible to go down this road in general.

(Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion and not that of my employer.)

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/aOqCc](https://archive.md/aOqCc)

------
overeater
Seems like another thing that would help is every browser and media service
adopted AV1 for video and WEBP for images. That itself would save an insane
amount of bandwidth (maybe a quarter of the world's bandwidth).

~~~
cbhl
AV1 encoding/decoding is still expensive. Netflix only started rolling it out
for part of its catalog recently.

It's been interesting watching them scale up Netflix Party in the meantime...

------
vonseel
Oh so it’s like PornHub on any usual day

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-24-youtube-standard-
definit...](https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-24-youtube-standard-definition-
default-worldwide-coronavirus-covid-19.html), which points to this.

~~~
thelean12
You should also change the title to be less misleading. They said they're
changing the _default_ quality, not completely limiting quality.

~~~
dang
Ok, we've stuck a default up there.

~~~
herpderperator
If it's default then it's not a limit. It should just says YouTube to change
default [...].

It mislead me for sure.

------
rustybolt
Youtube is a lost cause. It has too many ads now, I don't use it anymore.

~~~
t-writescode
Just pay for it. If you’re using it enough to complain, pay for it. $10 a
month.

~~~
codq
The real 'hack' is to subscribe to Google Play Music All Access. A music
streaming service that rivals Spotify, and comes with YouTube Premium (and YT
Music) bundled in.

~~~
p1necone
What's the library like - if I pick a random artist that has < 50000 monthly
listeners on spotify how likely is google play music to have them too?

~~~
dublinben
Google Play Music has 40m tracks to Spotify's 50m, but you can upload your own
music to fill in any gaps.

------
woofie11
To be frank, I'd like this all the time. For most videos, buffering is more
annoying than resolution, and I don't care about quality.

The only time I care about quality is some educational content where there are
e.g. small equations on the screen.

Good call.

~~~
SahAssar
You do know that you can select the resolution you want, right?

------
tudorw
Symmetric connection speeds we miss you, sorry about taking the internet and
turning it into a few mega nodes, we'll learn eventually.

------
TrinaryWorksToo
Where's the extension that will automatically upgrade my video quality when
this happens?

~~~
RealStickman
This extension should allow you to set basically anything you want for
YouTube. Preferred resolution, audio level, playback speed and much more.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enhancer-
for-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-youtube/)

