Pros and Cons for UK Broadband ISPs if YouTube Paywalls 4K Videos
Internet video streaming giant YouTube has caused somewhat of a storm after they conducted an “experiment” that locked the ability of some users to stream videos in 4K (UltraHD) behind their Premium subscription service, which usually costs £11.99 per month and includes ad free access with offline downloads.
At this point, it’s not known whether Google will actually adopt this approach on their YouTube platform, with the company merely stating that their experiment was intended to help them better understand “the feature preferences [of] Premium & non-Premium viewers” (Twitter).
The move would certainly make their Premium tier more attractive, albeit possibly at the cost of irritating a lot of regular non-Premium users. YouTube is also known to have tested another approach, which would increase the number of ads displayed on videos to non-Premium users (the ratio of ads to content is already getting extreme). In both cases, the goal is clearly to encourage take-up of their pricey ‘Premium’ tier.
However, it is interesting to explore how this might impact broadband ISPs, particularly the new generation of full fibre networks in the UK that often highlight smooth 4K streaming as one of their many benefits. On the other hand, YouTube only requires a minimum download speed of just 20Mbps to stream 4K content, which can also be met by most slower FTTC lines and many 4G mobile connections.
Approximate Speeds Recommended to Play YouTube Videos
| Resolution | Recommended sustained speed |
|---|---|
| 4K | 20 Mbps |
| HD 1080p | 5 Mbps |
| HD 720p | 2.5 Mbps |
| SD 480p | 1.1 Mbps |
| SD 360p | 0.7 Mbps |
Personally, I often find myself flicking YouTube videos into 4K (if this doesn’t happen automatically), particularly if watching on our downstairs TV or the office desktop. Sometimes it’s unnecessary for the content, but other times it does help to add that extra wow factor, and its loss probably wouldn’t encourage yours truly to pay £11.99 per month for a ‘Premium’ tier. But opinions may vary.
As for ISPs, some may welcome any associated reduction in network strain from YouTube’s capacity demands, although we suspect that many providers can already use sophisticated Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and caching to mitigate that by storing popular content closer in their networks to end-users. But on the flip side, it might make it slightly harder to sell the benefits and encourage the take-up of faster full fibre networks.
The other challenge in all this is that many consumers are already being asked to sign-up to a bewildering array of premium video streaming platforms (e.g. BritBox, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ etc. etc.), which is causing significant content fragmentation. Not to mention increasing household bills at a time when the cost-of-living crisis is forcing many to cut back.
Now may not be the best time for YouTube to try a hard upsell of their Premium tier.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Youtube has been implementing anti consumer practice after anti consumer practice. The annoying and repetitive ads are just touching the surface
From a bizarre algorithm that promotes their politics, to ridiculous copyright rules that have spawned tons of leech companies making a profit out of striking users and bullying smaller channels. Also removing the dislike bar to protect Biden the walking corpse and woke Hollywood movie remakes that no one wanted
Good thing to see that the youtube monopoly is finally threatened by alternatives such as Rumble and others who have seen big growth and web3 is sure to bring more players to the table.
I don’t know. I find if I watch a lot of one kind of content, it tends to recommend similar content to me in the future. Now if that happens to ferret basketball, progressive or libertarian politics, it tends to behave in the same way (most of the time, we all know they clamp down on some stuff when the government leans in heavily)
some of these comments bruh
aint no way
youtube removed the dislike button because of idiots who want to “protect children”, if you don’t think your child can handle internet comments then don’t give them a phone.
Regardless if you watch furry content, YouTube will push you mostly leftist media like the independent or guardian if you click on the news tab or if you search for the current thing
You can attenuate this by subscribing to better channels sure but there’s a lot of censorship like Russel Brand being banned for quoting the CDC
They started blocking content with Hunter Bidens laptop before the previous election, now with the midterm elections coming watch them crack down on more content to favor their side
John: That’s because furries are very liberal on social topics, albeit more conservative economically: https://www.flayrah.com/4981/furry-con-surveyed-porn-fantasy-pets-politics-bronies
The YouTube dislike button is still there for most content. Sure, I get what you are saying, they removed it for certain movie productions because it was antagonising the movie PR team dealing with the bad reviews. But I just looked now, the dislike button is still there on the 1st random 5 videos I loaded up.
If you don’t see the dislike numbers, you’re much more likely to ignore it. Was the logic
Not just woke hollywood but also the teleprompter puppet in the white whom they also removed comments, they didn’t want you to see the vast difference in like ratio and positive to negative comments as it would break their narrative.
And don’t forget the fact that most disliked views are on videogame companies such as Activision and EA for constantly insulting the fans with greedy practices and stuff no one wants
I think you guys have taken a wrong turn here. This website is about Internet Service Providers and other networking topics. Please could you piss off and take your right wing conspiracy theories to Troth Social (no that’s not a typo) or whatever. Thanks!
@Greyscale
I think you missed a trick, you could have complained about them ‘injecting politics’ ;).
@Grey the article is directly about youtube policy, if you can’t handle arguments and act like a baby then you should not be reading comments
Have YouTube been messing with the 1080p content in the build up to this? It looks terrible.
They are messing up in general. Uploaded a 2min 4k video of a wall just to test. They took ages process it and then said it wouldn’t be published as there was a copyright issue! No sound to the video either
The 1080p content looks fine to me and I view a lot every day.
Not suprise, hosting video is very expensive, 4k video even more. YouTube will be paid less for its ads than traditional TV (its more risky content).
I suspect YouTube make a lot less money than people think.
I suspect youtube makes a whole lot more money than people suspect. The amount of ads is just incredible.
After the payouts last year Revenue: 28.84 billion USD
So yeah poor sods get them to the food bank
That revenue didn’t come free. How much did it cost them to make that revenue? Whether $30 billion or $300 billion if it’s costing them more to make it the business isn’t making money.
As of 2 years ago they were give or take breaking even. Alphabet do not release costs and profit margins for YouTube but going by a couple of years ago the margins are either slim or zero.
They use an enormous amount of compute, storage and bandwidth. In a number of countries YouTube uses more bandwidth than any other application or website. Their power requirements are huge which hurts given the recent widespread increase in prices.
I mean, I am not the only one who is getting “creative” about YT premium subscription, am I? (Hint: it has something to do with Argentina)
Interesting. Noted 😉 😉
Haha I do the same!
What VPN service do you use?
I do the same with a few other services. The top Netflix package costs me 94TRY a month (£5, a saving of £11 a month) Tidal music costs me $225 Argentine Pesos per month (£1.30, saving me £13.70 a month) … I also get Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for £70 for 3 years instead of the £395 it’d usually cost! I also get YouTube Premium for free because I use SmartTube which basically does the exact same stuff!
I have YouTube Pro modified YouTube ad free and ability to download without paying and have YouTube TV app ad free.
I have YouTube Premium and just pay for it because I’m not a freeloader. It being a family membership used heavily by a couple of people and more lightly by the other two but nonetheless used provides some value.
I hate youtube on any smart tv because it very annoying adverts every 3 minutes or less has put off everyones but I use youtube via pc computer with add on to stop adverts called Enhancer for YouTube are brilliant as I never seen any adverts in the last 12 months now but I hope it stay forever.
Some creators put a huge amount of work into their content. You aren’t paying them for it. Please reconsider for at least the channels you appreciate.
In the current climate is it the best time for youtube to try and drive up premium subscriptions when most consumers are making all kinds of cut backs just to keep above water?
If they want to increase subscriber numbers, lower the cost perhaps?
Honestly I wouldn’t mind not getting 4K content
for now if it meant fewer ads, although I suspect the result will be no 4K *and* more ads. 4K clearly uses significantly more bandwidth and that has a cost (caching reduces that, but I suspect does not eliminate it). Moreover, those who would benefit from 4K content are more likely to be able to pay, and to receive the content in the first place without problems.
“Moreover, those who would benefit from 4K content are more likely to be able to pay”.
I mean 4K TVs are like £150 now. My mate who is in receipt of public funds has 4K. I think you’re overplaying the cost of it by just a bit there. You only need like 20-30mbit for a single youtube 4K stream too so I’d say it’s within reach of most people.
Youtube Premium is £8 a year if you VPN to Turkey. And yeah it worked fine with my regular google account. VPN’d to Turkey, signed up to a year of premium, paid with revolut. Job done. Even if they cut me off £8 is still less than 1 month of UK price. We’re being ripped off massively.
I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while, but that clause in the T&C “You agree that you will not present any false, inaccurate or misleading information in an effort to misrepresent your country of residence” always stops me. I have a lot of eggs in the Google basket (Google One, photos, over a decade and a half of email) and the fear of them banning my account stops me in my tracks.
Kinda screwed up – I’m less fearful of using Ad Block Pro on youtube than giving them money. But there absolutely no way whatsoever that I’m giving them more than Disney+ or Netflix just to remove the ads.
You have addicted your digital life from Google phoenixw. Recently Google has suspended my reviewing account for leaving 3 or 4 honest reviews and because I am using my Gmail account for irrelevant stuff only – I don’t care. I can create another account within seconds. For relevant stuff I have my own mail server hosted in OVH, for my photos, music etc I am using NAS and additional hard drive attached to RPi as a backup for it. On the YT I am watching 2-3 channels (not subscribing them) so for me YT can die. It is now full of really low quality content.
Currently on a server in Istanbul not working for me no matter which was I go. Still says £169.99 a year
Humphrey: close your browser. connect to turkey VPN. open browser in incognito mode and go to the site. That happened to me a few times too. You could also try using a different browser just to sign up e.g. edge
Phoenixw re them banning accounts yeah that’s a risk I’ll take. I would like to think they’d prefer a paying customer to one using adblocker as I’m not gonna pay them in excess of £120 a year for something they charge Turkey £8 a year for. But yeah it’s a risk. I downloaded all my google photos (you can get them to send you giant ZIP files you can download) just in case anyway as I had been thinking of moving them off google as it’s costing too much and the next tier after 200GB is 2TB which is just ridiculous.
It’s as much about the revenue the creators receive to be honest. Where there’s higher buying power the creators get more per thousand views.
It isn’t just YouTube that are missing out.
Thanks but I’ll have to sign up for a new account on a vpn I’ve tried 2 and all else you’ve suggested and it’s not working
If they were not so greedy then YouTube premium would take off. Although I can easily afford the cost I baulk at spending such a sum on premium just to rid me of adverts. They’re becoming ridiculous now in their intensity and I just go and do something else if I get too many. Should a another well supported vid streaming service become available then I could see YouTube reducing the costs of their premium product and the amount of ads but nothing else comes close and they know this, it is an absolute monopoly now.
I have YouTube premium but their recent change to their chromecasts has me questioning if I’ll continue. The recent change is that any older chromecasts (ie not the chromecast with google TV) are now unable to sign into YouTube accounts.
So if you cast a youtube video from your phone to a chromecast and are logged in, that’s fine. But if you then want to browse the suggested videos on the chromecast itself they are not suggestions for your account, and you now have to sit through ads. There’s no legitimate reason for this other than to force more ads on people (who already have premium) and to force people to buy newer chromecast models.
Joke’s on them I’ve started to move to FireTV sticks instead as they let me login to youtube on the stick.
VPNs are wonderful things
Lot easier to pay nothing and use uBlock
As a Youtube Premium subscriber this would be good news for me as I’d get better value for the £11.99 I pay every month.
I might pay for a more premium Youtube service if it was bundled with a storage subscription (i.e. what you pay to get the 100GB limit and a few other “office” type benefits instead of the 15GB limit).