While 4K or 1440p is the way to go when you want to watch high-quality videos on YouTube, the video-streaming giant is exploring a new “1080p Premium” option that will be exclusive to YouTube Premium subscribers.
The new option was shared over at Reddit, where select users got the 1080p Premium option on their YouTube premium account. The new streaming option notes that it has “enhanced bitrate”, and it’s speculated to be YouTube’s way of addressing the wants of users to enjoy higher-quality videos without going for 1440p or 2160p (or 4K) video resolution.
The audience that will benefit from this 1080p Premium YouTube option is mobile users, which usually have devices that have a display that tops out at Full HD (or 1080p). While the main speculation is that this option should offer videos at 1080p but with less aggressive compression, we will not be surprised if YouTube will use this option as a paywall feature for 60FPS and 120FPS playback options. A few months ago, there were reports that YouTube was planning to make 4K streaming a paywall feature, but it seems that they did not push through with that–for now.
This also comes at a time when longtime YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki resigned after holding the position for 9 years, with Neal Mohan taking over CEO duties. There’s also a possibility that Mohan might be making immediate changes to YouTube’s business model, but that remains to be seen in the coming days.
