YouTube to Make Watching 4K Videos a ‘Premium’ Exclusive?

Based on the growth (and increasingly annoying prevalence) of adverts seen on the platform, it’s hardly any secret that YouTube (Google) is getting more and more aggressive in attempting to get people to sign up for its premium-level subscription service. – And, in fairness, if it was less expensive, I probably would. For £11.99 a month though, no thanks.

Yes, I know, ‘Premium’ doesn’t just begin and end with videos and it does actually give you access to a fairly nice variety of content. But between Netflix, Disney+, Sky, internet, PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass, and all other manners of things I’m signed up to, quite frankly, I don’t feel like YouTube has to be added to the list of them.

Following a report via Ghacks, however, information has started appearing online suggesting that YouTube (again, technically Google) might be looking to take its ‘Premium’ push to another level. Namely, watching 4K videos on the platform, regardless of the source, might be shortly set to become entirely exclusive to paid members!

YouTube to Make 4K Videos a ‘Premium’ Exclusive Feature?

I entirely get and understand that YouTube has to make money. Hence why, overall, I tend to not grumble too much about the number of adverts which, admittedly, does seem to have ramped up quite notably over the last couple of years. – With that being said though, it seems pretty clear that YouTube really wants people to actually go for their ‘Premium’ service and by making 4K videos exclusive to those members, it would certainly represent another big move in that direction.

It almost feels like YouTube is continually attempting to make the ‘free’ version so untenable (and miserable) an experience that, sooner or later, and like it or not, we’re all going to have to go ‘Premium’.

Ad-Blockers Going Bye Bye

Having an ad-blocker extension to your browser certainly makes the YouTube experience significantly more pleasant. With that being said though, even the future of this is in doubt with Chromium browser extensions set to move to a new higher ‘security’ tier this January which will, at least in theory, see many ad-blocking extensions rendered completely useless. – And given that the most widely used browser is Google Chrome, well… It really doesn’t take a genius to see what’s happening here if not by design then, at the very least, as a very pleasant side bonus to the tech giant’s revenue.

The biggest problem, of course, is that there is no real competitor to YouTube. If there was, hey, at least we could vote with our virtual feet. – For the moment though, it seems that the passably enjoyable ‘free’ experience of YouTube might be set to get a little more miserable in the near future!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!