These weeks we are living in an unprecedented situation, with millions of people confined in their homes to try to slow the advance of the coronavirus. In times like this, most of us “take refuge” in the Internet to communicate and entertain.
To avoid to saturate the Internetplatforms such as YouTube, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix have already been announced that reduce the quality of their content in the European Union.
For the moment “only” affects Android users
In the European Union, YouTube announced that they would “temporarily change all the traffic to standard-definition”. In the case of a country like India, in which live more than 1,300 million inhabitants, it seems that the necessary restrictions are going a step beyond.
If we do a search in the social networks, we see that there are many users showing screenshots in which you can appreciate that YouTube has limited the quality to 480p in this country.
@YouTubeIndia I am unable to view videos in 1080p. Why so?
Please find the screenshot.
There is only option to view in 480p. pic.twitter.com/ByjimeSzd6— Abhijit Jayakumar (@AbhijitJayakum3) March 31, 2020
It is a change that affects whether you’re watching content using a Wifi network or mobile data. Apparently, as pointed out by in XDA Developersthis restriction has to do with the device from which you access the platform.
Of time what have been applied to the Android usersthat previously, they could play the videos even in 4K. It is already active in the country’s major cities (such as Mumbai or Delhi), and it seems that gradually will be extended to other regions of India.
From XDA to confirm that this change, at least for now, is only affecting devices with Android, because in the desktop version YouTube you can choose up to 1080p.
YouTube has not yet made any official statement about it. When they announced few days ago that they reduced the quality to “standard”, most of us think of in 720p.
Watching the videos at 480p is a backspace important, that seems to send us back to past decades. In fact, this makes us wonder if this kind of restrictions will be applied in other areas of the world.
WhatsApp will not let you share videos longer than 15 seconds as status in India.
The 15-second WhatsApp Status video limit has not been officially announced, but it is already being noted by many users in India. pic.twitter.com/g6sMxzKM5p— Bhanu (@ThisIsBhanuPr) March 30, 2020
It is not the only restrictive measure of this kind that has been applied in the country. For example, WhatsApp has also announced that temporarily limited to the “States” (the stories that is inside the app) to 15 seconds, instead of the 30 that are allowed usually.
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The news
Back to the 90’s: YouTube limited to 480p playback on Android from India
it was originally published in
Engadget
by
Santi Araujo
.
