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It seems like the new YouTube CEO is already making changes since YouTube has announced that it is testing a new “1080p Premium” option for its Premium subscribers. According to the company’s spokesperson, Paul Pennington, the option is currently only available to a small group of YouTube Premium subscribers. The new feature is essentially an enhanced bitrate version of 1080p that provides a higher-quality viewing experience by offering more information per pixel. However, Pennington clarified that there are no changes to the existing quality offerings for 1080p resolution on YouTube.

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It’s worth noting that resolution is just one factor in determining overall video quality. Other factors, such as bitrate and color depth, are also crucial in making a video look good. Bitrate refers to how much data is used to transfer each second of video. A 1080p Blu-ray, for example, provides a maximum of 40 Mbps, which delivers a crisp image. YouTube’s standard 1080p bitrate, on the other hand, ranges between 8 and 10 Mbps, resulting in footage with more blocks than Blu-ray.

YouTube’s new Premium 1080p option is an attempt to provide a better viewing experience for its Premium subscribers. One Reddit user shared a screenshot of the “Stats for Nerds” tool, which is accessible via the settings toolbar of a YouTube video. It revealed that the Premium 1080p option ran at around 13 Mbps compared to 8 Mbps in the standard mode for the same video. While YouTube typically uses variable bitrate encoding, which means the amount of data used fluctuates depending on what’s on the screen, video encoded at a higher bitrate will generally look better.

The new Premium 1080p option could provide a 50 percent boost in bitrate, resulting in a better viewing experience for those willing to pay for the service. YouTube doesn’t show videos at their maximum bitrate to save on bandwidth costs. This is why lower-quality videos take up less bandwidth in the journey from YouTube’s servers to the viewer’s screen.

This is not the first time YouTube has tested higher-quality video behind its Premium paywall. Last year, the company tested a 4K playback feature that was only accessible to subscribers. However, this move received a fair amount of backlash from the community, as some people were losing access to something they previously had for free. This experiment, however, only adds a perk for paying customers while keeping the regular 1080p option the same. That is, if you consider the lower-bitrate 1080p to be the same as higher-bitrate 1080p.

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