YouTube’s higher-quality 1080p option is now available for all Premium subscribers on desktop globally, spokesperson Paul Pennington confirmed to The Verge. The company officially launched the “enhanced bitrate” 1080p in April on iOS after an earlier test.
I don’t pay for Premium, but I’ve seen the enhanced bitrate option on a handful of videos on Friday as I browsed YouTube in Chrome on my MacBook Air. When I try to click the enhanced bitrate, YouTube prompts me to subscribe to Premium to be able to use it. (If you decide to subscribe to Premium to get the better bitrate, you should know that the service is a bit more expensive than it used to be.)
Don’t worry: the non-enhanced 1080p is still available for us non-Premium subscribers. But if you can take advantage of the enhanced bitrate, it will make things “look extra crisp and clear, especially for videos with lots of detail and motion,” according to an April blog post from YouTube.
The enhanced 1080p for Premium subscribers is also rolling out on YouTube on living room-focused devices like Chromecasts and video game consoles, Pennington confirmed. The feature isn’t available on Android yet, according to Pennington, but in June, it showed up for at least one person, 9to5Google reports.
