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YouTube Expands New ‘Enhanced’ 1080p Resolution to Desktop Users, Select Smart TVs

YouTube Expands New ‘Enhanced’ 1080p Resolution to Desktop Users, Select Smart TVs

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
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David Satin

YouTube is giving more users a way to access its newest, paywalled screen resolution. The company first began testing what it calls its “enhanced bitrate” 1080p resolution in February and rolled it out to YouTube Premium users on iOS devices in April. Now, the enhanced bitrate option is launching on desktop browsers.

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the new resolution option is now available for desktop YouTube Premium users around the globe. The company says enhanced bitrate 1080p makes videos look extra sharp and clear, and it’s especially useful for enhancing videos with copious motion and detail. It has been spotted on some Android-powered devices as well, but 9to5 Google reports that that rollout has not been as widespread. According to the outlet, YouTube has launched the enhancement on select TV devices — primarily Google’s “non-Android-based Chromecasts and game consoles,” but at this point, complete details have not yet been released.

The good news for users who don’t have YouTube Premium in their budgets is that the normal 1080p High Definition streaming resolution isn’t going anywhere. It will still be available without needing a paid subscription, which is all the better considering the price of a YouTube Premium subscription recently took a jump.

Formerly YouTube Premium cost $11.99 per month but in July the video hosting platform raised the price to $13.99 per month. The main benefit of a YouTube Premium subscription is ad-free video streaming on the site, but users can also sync up and watch videos with friends and family, download videos to watch away from WiFi, and much more.

It's been suggested that YouTube could enhance the value of its live TV streaming service YouTube TV by giving customers of that platform free YouTube Premium subscriptions, but there’s been no movement on that idea by the company thus far. The company did set up a Twitter poll to get customer feedback on YouTube Premium in July, but the poll has since expired.

If users respond to the introduction of the enhanced bitrate 1080p resolution on desktop devices in a big way, YouTube may continue to experiment with features that will be kept behind the Premium paywall. Last fall, the company toyed with the notion of making 4K videos available only to Premium subscribers, though that idea lasted only a couple of weeks.

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Read full bio ›
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