Why am I getting low quality video streaming?

You may have noticed that the video quality recently has been lower than usual when you've been streaming via apps such as Netflix, Amazon and YouTube. Please be aware that this is not a device defect, it’s a result of some temporary changes made to cope with traffic.

Due to the recent unprecedented levels of internet traffic, the European Union has asked companies like Netflix, Amazon and YouTube to ensure that they are using telecommunications networks as efficiently as possible.

Accordingly, YouTube and Netflix have announced they will adjust their bandwidth usage so that their system uses less network capacity during certain busy periods. This means that you may experience lower video quality while streaming videos on your computer, TV or mobile device during these times.

For your convenience we have provided the links to the recent public announcements made by YouTube and Netflix, below.

YouTube

“YouTube temporarily defaulted all videos on YouTube to standard definition in the European Union (EU), United Kingdom (UK), and Switzerland (CH). This update is slowly rolling out, and users can manually adjust the video quality.”

Read the latest update from YouTube.

Netflix

“In Europe, for the next 30 days, within each category we’ve simply removed the highest bandwidth streams. If you are particularly tuned into video quality, you may notice a very slight decrease in quality within each resolution.”

Read the announcement from Netflix.