From Google’s standpoint, it may be that most of the current use of YouTube video content is mainly through mobile phones, and most of these use cases are mainly played in 1080P quality. Therefore, it seems that the 4K quality playback option has become an exclusive feature of YouTube Premium. It won’t cause much impact, and it can even reduce the network bandwidth used for more streaming.
Related news alleges that Google plans to increase the growth of YouTube Premium paying users through more “incentives”, including making the 4K playback option a YouTube Premium-exclusive feature.
According to the Reddit forum website, Google seems to have begun to test the 2160P 4K quality playback option as an exclusive feature for YouTube Premium subscribers, which means that ordinary users may not be able to choose to play YouTube videos in 4K quality specifications in the future.
However, at present, Google does not seem to plan to officially make this adjustment, so users using Android devices, even if they have not subscribed to YouTube Premium, can still choose to play 4K video content in YouTube, but iOS device users in the United States, It appears that this playback feature is currently only available with a YouTube Premium subscription.
Whether this test will become a formal adjustment project in the future is still uncertain, and it will mainly depend on the actual feedback from users.
From Google’s standpoint, it may be that most of the current use of YouTube video content is mainly through mobile phones, and most of these use cases are mainly played in 1080P quality. Therefore, it seems that the 4K quality playback option has become an exclusive feature of YouTube Premium. It won’t cause much impact, and it can even reduce the network bandwidth used for more streaming. However, for the use of YouTube 4K video content played through 4K resolution TVs and set-top boxes, it will obviously have an impact.