YouTube 2.03.04 restricts resolution of 60p video to 720p

[Kuschelmonschter]

YouTube 2.0 introduced quite severe playback issues for high frame rate video. 60p video suffered from severe stuttering on Sony ATV starting at Full HD resolution already while YouTube 1.x played it buttery smooth up to 4K at much lower CPU usage. In YouTube 2.03.04, Google now restricts resolution of such video to 720p. That's how Google fixes issues. A good example of how significant this Android TV platform really is.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Yeh, there has been talk about if the X1 Extreme vs X1 picture processor makes any difference to the Youtube performance or if its all down to the mediatek soc for network vs decoding the video.

Image processor has no influence. Big difference of those YouTube videos vs. Amazon/Netflix is that they are 60p. If you download those videos with youtube-dl, they play fine in Kodi for example. And since the image processor (X1 vs. X1 Extreme) works on uncrompressed video, operations are the same no matter which app you use, whether video is VP9 or HEVC a.s.o.

I wonder why you are seeing worse performance?

I am not exactly experiencing worse performance. YouTube app just tells me that the best I can get with the TV is 720p60. As for 30p video, it goes all the way up to the full 2160p.

Incidently is HDR working now or do we still need to cast from a phone to get HDR?

Not working for me. YouTube app plays stream 302 (720p60 VP9) rather than 334 (720p60 VP9.2 HDR).

[stormyuk]

Well this is interesting, if I play on the TV that World in HDR video plays great, the odd dropped frame but nothing serious, it can even play a video that's pumping down 60Mbps @60fps

The problem comes when casting, when casting from a phone or tablet you get the bonus of HDR on my XE90. Trouble is it's very choppy and plays the videos looking better but stuttering bad. Hmmm. No HDR it is then.

[marcinor]

Hello. Can you check on 49xe9005 the following video from the link works smoothly in 2160p 60 fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSdb0BzEN8&t=17s

[stormyuk]

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@marcinor wrote:

Hello. Can you check on 49xe9005 the following video from the link works smoothly in 2160p 60 fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STSdb0BzEN8&t=17s

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I will have a look, my guess is without HDR it will be great, with HDR (via cast) it will be awful. I will have a look though and let you know.

[marcinor]

ok I am waiting to let you know

[Kuschelmonschter]

I am still stuck at 720p60. If you read on reddit, this issue has plagued people on several occasions over the course of time. The problem has come and gone. It looks to be a regional server-side thing. So probably the app has received some update while software on some servers does not yet support it.

Totally forgot that I can actually uninstall the latest 2.03.04 update from the Play Store and test with the stock version of YouTube. Will do so in the evening.

[Kuschelmonschter]

I just uninstalled the YouTube updates and am now on stock version 2.02.08. Now it goes all the way up to 2160p60 again (but stutters like crazy).

I then cleared data and cache and reinstalled 2.03.04 and boom... back to 720p60 max.

Since it works for you, I still assume that it is an incompatibility between client version 2.03.04 and the server I am connecting to.

[marcinor]

how can you, check out a movie 4k hdr 60 fps, does it cut and run smoothly?

[Kuschelmonschter]

Updated to 2.03.06 which just got released. Guess what? 4K@60fps is back...

CPU usage is down quite a bit. Playback only exhibits occasional stutters.

[marcinor]

At my place it cuts even more, and after that the voice search microphone icon in the youtube application has disappeared 😞