Recently, some users on Twitter and Reddit reported that YouTube asked them to upgrade to a premium service to watch 4K high-definition videos. As of this writing, there has been no official announcement or confirmation from the streaming service.
One Twitter user shared that some users were asked to sign up for YouTube’s premium service after trying to watch some videos in his 4K.
We haven’t been able to reproduce this ourselves and at this time we don’t know if this is just a small attempt to test the waters or the start of a full launch. Ads are removed from , you can access YouTube Music and download videos to watch later.
Unless you regularly watch YouTube on your 4K laptop, monitor, or TV, that’s probably not the biggest selling point, as you’ll still be in the free tier up to 1440p. The idea of paying for may seem exorbitant to many as we face the rising cost of everything we buy due to inflation.
Our own Sean Riley is a YouTube Premium subscriber and replied that this is well below the list of incentives and that they will remove the ads at the top of that list (seriously, up to 12 pre-roll ads?), YouTube, music is a nice bonus, manage Easy downloads and background games round out the top four.
But many of us cable cutters are already paying nearly as much as we used to pay for cable TV to watch our favorite content on services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus, so adding $11.99 may not be problem.
