Google has started rolling out a new feature for the YouTube service that will offer high-quality music videos to YouTube Premium subscribers. Subscribers can choose "1080p Premium" from a menu of video quality settings, either on the web or via the YouTube smartphone app.
In a statement to The Verge, YouTube spokesperson Paul Pennington confirmed that the option is currently only available to a small number of subscribers (YouTube Premium) and will be gradually rolled out to all subscribers in the future.
The premium 1080p option improves picture quality no matter what device you're using. The new option differs from the traditional 1080p option because it displays video at a higher data transfer rate. Although the resolution is the same in both cases, the data transfer rate and color depth can play an important role in providing a better viewing experience. Higher data rates provide more information per pixel, resulting in better image quality, even compared to higher resolutions when the data throughput is lower.
The normal 1080p resolution on YouTube provides data transfer rates of 8 to 10 Mbit/s. Although Google does not list data transfer rates for 1080p Premium, some users who had this feature reported numbers as high as 13Mbps.
Different streaming services offer different data transfer rates, Netflix reaches 16 Mbps, and Apple TV + service reaches 30 Mbps, and it is considered the best broadcast service in terms of data transfer rate, to see if this number is fixed varies according to the resolution of watching the video and the user's internet speed.
Notably, Google announced yesterday another new feature for YouTube, which is dubbed videos to make content available in multiple languages.