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This article was published on July 16, 2020

YouTube is bringing HD video quality back in India on mobile


YouTube is bringing HD video quality back in India on mobile

When the coronavirus pandemic started, a bunch of streaming platforms in India started to restrict their video quality to a maximum resolution of 480p on mobile devices, as a way to reduce network congestion when other crucial services might need more bandwidth. YouTube was probably the biggest platform of those who did so.

Now, thankfully, the platform has restored the ability to watch videos in 1080p on mobile in India. My colleague Abhimanyu and I tested this on a couple of Android and iOS devices, and we can confirm that HD video quality is indeed back.

At the moment, you can access these videos in HD through your Wi-Fi connection. However, YouTube seems to be restricting video quality to 480p on mobile data.

HD video quality option on YouTube mobile app in India

 

Abhimanyu said that some older videos weren’t available in HD quality on his device. It’s possible that Youtube’s just rolling this out slowly.

We’ve reached out to Google for more details, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.

A report from Medianama published suggested that while Netflix India lifted its bitrate limits last month.

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