With many people around the world quarantined at home due to the coronavirus outbreak, there's a lot more video being streamed. YouTube is one of the services that's likely seeing a boost in streaming traffic, and now it's revealed that its limiting video quality to easy bandwidth usage.
Starting today, YouTube videos will stream at standard definition by default worldwide. Bloomberg reports that users will still be able to stream HD video if they'd like, but they'll have to manually select it.
YouTube says that it'll default to SD quality video for a month.
“We continue to work closely with governments and network operators around the globe to do our part to minimize stress on the system during this unprecedented situation,” Google explained.
Typically YouTube will choose the best quality for you based on your internet speed and the size of your screen. With many more people streaming more video that usual while they're self-isolating at home, though, YouTube has decided to automatically serve everyone SD video to reduce bandwidth consumption a bit and ease concerns that some people might have about the growth in internet usage.
