Stuck in Low-Quality / 360p Quality: The (Unofficial) Discussion Thread

[JCollins2048]

For some time now, users have been reporting that videos played through Playlet itself are being locked to 360p 30FPS. (#754) This is what's known.

Consolidated Info

• According to iBacha, what's happening is that YouTube sometimes uses SABR streaming information instead of the traditional DASH. This used to result in an error / breakage, but iBacha currently has it to where if a video's DASH info can't be found (say, it wasn't sent), then Playlet falls back to the 360p stream.
  • iBacha is also unsure if SABR info can even be implemented into Playlet.
• It's been reported that YouTube Revanced is or was experiencing this issue as well.
• From what I can tell, it affects random accounts at random times. My main account, for example, was affected two weeks ago while an alternate account of mine still has up to 1080p 60FPS videos. This is through the same version of Playlet on the same TV with the same setup.
• Not being logged in at all seems to allow full-quality videos pretty consistently. I also tried a Windows desktop player that doesn't let you log in. It played the video at 720p60 just fine.

Workarounds and Alternatives

• Attempting to play a video with ytjs (via the web interface) sometimes works (with full quality, no less), sometimes doesn't. All videos must be started manually through this method. No playlists, no queues.
• Using Invidious circumvents the 360p issue, allowing full-quality video even with afflicted accounts. However, it has been reported that this can cause a 500 / anti-bot error, similar to the ytjs workaround.
• Using the official YouTube app on Roku works as normal — albeit with ads.
• Streaming to a TV via web browser (Brave, Safari, et cetera) also works like normal.

So, yeah. That's what's going on with that.

[JCollins2048]

And… after using the official YouTube app for over a week, I suddenly have 1080p / 60 FPS videos under Playlet again. Huh.

Wonder if watching over 100 ads had something to do with that. 🤔