Opinion: Google has officially unveiled its latest Pixel products with the Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Tablet, but what was most relevant to this column was the news that broke out earlier in the week around YouTube.
Google has been testing over the past few weeks where 4K content is locked behind a YouTube Premium subscription. Google confirmed this on Twitter (a tweet that has since been deleted) as part of an experiment to understand feature preferences between Premium and non-Premium viewers.
It’s early days and it’s not a done deal for a 4K stream to be locked behind a firewall, but for me, putting a 4K viewing behind a subscription would be the wrong decision.
From Google’s point of view, they are losing money on the streaming service (that’s another discussion entirely for another column) and need to make up the money somehow, but I don’t think putting in 4K content makes sense.
4K Ultra HD is, or at least should be, the resolution we should all be watching, but it isn’t. 4K has been around for at least ten years and it still isn’t as popular as it should be. If it weren’t for OTT services, there wouldn’t be much 4K content to sample from Sky and BT Sport, the only real UK broadcasters committed to owning 4K channels. The likes of ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, and even the BBC (although iPlayer is increasing its share) are falling behind. We’re still very used to watching HD, even though we buy TVs that are capable of doing much better.
Examples like Disney+, iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+ are leading the way in making 4K content available on a single subscription. While Netflix’s tiered approach to decisions makes some sense in giving the consumer choice, it doesn’t help with the spread of 4K as viewers will always opt for the cheaper option if they think it’s not necessary to go to the higher level.
It’s a similar dilemma affecting 8K rollout, as this has suffered from a dearth of content as well as a lack of access. Aside from some experiments conducted by BT Sport, not many broadcasters outside of Japan’s NHK focus on watching 8K; Televisions are still very expensive and there is hardly any content to display in the format.
The same can happen for 4K except there is a lot of content within the ecosystem to view, so locking it behind a paid subscription would be a private goal. Internet speeds are improving, 4K is there but a bigger boost is needed.
If YouTube sticks to its current line of thinking, it will simply stick to what it has rather than open doors. Once 4K becomes the standard, the better, because we’ll leave the very low resolutions for HD and SD. Access to 4K gives people a reason to upgrade to 4K screens and buy more 4K content. Denying this access only slows 4K uptake as a rule.