YouTube TV Restores 1080p Enhanced Streaming for Select Users

What you should know

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Oh boy, YouTube TV users, you’re in for a treat. Again! It seems like the “1080p Enhanced” quality option is making a sneaky comeback on certain devices. Remember that? It first showed up earlier this year, promising us a crisper picture by cranking up the bitrate of 1080p resolution streams at a smooth 60 frames per second. Ah, the dream for anyone who’s into sports or anything fast-paced, really. Less of those annoying compression artifacts.

But then, poof! It vanished. Just like that. The manual setting to enable “1080p Enhanced” mysteriously disappeared not long after its grand debut. Google was all, “Oops, our bad, it’s a bug.” And we were left hanging, waiting for any updates. Fast forward to now, and some users, especially those with an Apple TV, have started noticing the option again over the past few days. Is it here to stay? Who knows. Google’s playing it coy, not saying much about whether they’re rolling this out for good across all devices and platforms.

Here’s a fun fact from 9to5Google for you tech nerds out there. Even when we couldn’t manually switch to “1080p Enhanced,” the magic was still happening behind the scenes for certain channels. If you were curious enough to turn on “Stats for Nerds” and saw the “412” codec, that was YouTube TV still giving you that high-quality stream. Sneaky, right? Couldn’t toggle it, but it was there, hiding in plain sight.

For YouTube TV subscribers who’ve been craving that extra oomph in their viewing experience without forking over more cash for a 4K plan, this is pretty sweet news. Of course, you’ll need a solid internet connection to make the most of it, but hey, having the option is pretty neat.

Now, will Google make a big deal out of this? Or will they just let the option quietly roll out to more devices? Only time will tell. But let’s keep our fingers crossed. Considering YouTube TV’s prices have been creeping up and we’ve lost some channels like the Sinclair-owned Bally Sports Regional Networks, it’s nice to get a little something extra. A little bonus feature for those of us who’ve stuck around, loyal as ever.