ThrottleTube

I never really thought about it until now, but I have a sneaking suspicion that YouTube throttles the download speed of some videos.

Why?

Have you ever waited as a 2-minute-length video slows to a crawl while loading, only to go to another video, perhaps 9 minutes in length, that loads almost instantly?

You go back to that 2 minute video and it still doesn’t seem to want to load.

This isn’t a rare occurrence. However, it’s not necessarily often either, and at some points in the day if I go back to that slow-loading video it may load quickly.

There should be no reason for this. All aspects of a website should load at equally the same speeds.

I’m not exactly trying to prove anything, and I’m not even sure how one would go about testing it. I do think it’s worth pointing out, though, because any sort of throttling where the internet is concerned, I believe, is quite simply wrong. Google/YouTube should know better.

Streaming HD Needs to be Faster.

I’m waiting for an HD video to load on YouTube. This is unacceptable.

I discovered YouTube in 2005 around the time it first launched. It was unbelievable! Up to that point I had never seen such a thing in my life. I could find a video on virtually anything I wanted, and it was served to me fast. Good quality, fast, streaming video. YouTube has earned its places at #1.

Of course, as time goes on we expect improvements and upgrades and all that stuff. The support for high definition content being one of those things, and it is awesome to have the choice when watching videos.

But it’s too slow. And that kills the appeal YouTube originally had to me in 2005. It wasn’t the quality of the video, it was the speed at which it was served. Like I said, there was nothing like it on the internet. You had to download a .MOV or a .AVI and wait however long based on the size of the file. Once it was downloaded, then you could watch it. YouTube offered a way to watch videos as they were still downloading.

HD content on YouTube messes that up. The download speed is too slow and it can’t keep up with the playback speed. I feel that until this is fixed, it’s going to be a while before HD content on the internet is something we can enjoy.