The big UP questioned the platform why the videos are getting more and more blurry, and the answer is much more complicated than the question.

Text｜Wang Yuchan

Editor｜Qiao Qian

On October 8, the video creator @FilmStorm, who has over ten million fans across the entire network, released a video with the title "The Clarity Is Worse Than 4 Years Ago! Is It Your Illusion That Videos Are Becoming Blurry?". This video reveals the phenomenon that video platforms compress the video quality by reducing the bitrate and adjusting the encoding format to lower the traffic cost.

"In 2024, 4K videos should be something you're used to. Platforms are competing to improve the picture quality, and we're also constantly upgrading our equipment to enhance the quality of our programs. But the videos you finally see after we post them on the platform are becoming blurry. The picture quality of the videos we'll see in the future may not be as good as that in 2020." Pan Tianhong, the UP owner of the @FilmStorm channel, said at the beginning of the video.

Pan Tianhong shows the "hidden rules of the industry" including: Video platforms will reduce the video bitrate, change the encoding format, gradually reduce the picture quality as the number of viewers increases, and even sharpen the video to cover up the fact of the decline in clarity, ultimately achieving the result of saving the platform's traffic expenses. Pan Tianhong said that such practices are widespread among domestic video platforms, making the "4K videos" that domestic viewers see actually just "fake 4K" with insufficient bitrate.

Screenshot of Bilibili Dynamic

Shortly after the video was released, it was taken down from the entire network, adding to people's speculation about the hidden circumstances behind it. @FilmStorm responded through social media: "Due to multiple reasons, the video related to clarity can only be taken down from the entire network. We still hope that Internet technology can continue to evolve to allow everyone to see clearer videos."

The problem of "broadband cost" is an old problem that has emerged with the Internet. Nowadays, with the upgrade and popularization of hardware devices such as cameras and graphics cards, more and more high-quality video content is emerging, and this problem is also gradually intensifying.

Why is it so difficult to watch high-quality videos? Besides paying and watching ads, do ordinary video users have a chance to win the "Battle for High-Quality"?

Screenshot of the video of FilmStorm

Why Are YouTube Videos Clearer?

The question of "why YouTube videos are clearer" has been discussed by professionals in China for a long time. After the "FilmStorm incident" caused public opinion, the WeChat **** article "No One Can Become China's YouTube" written by @CommentCorp in 2020 has once again become popular. This article, which was written four years ago, detailedly interprets the history of Google reducing YouTube's broadband cost through technical means and negotiation skills.

In China, operators are stronger than platform parties. Website operators need to pay bandwidth fees to operators to ensure the access speed of users. While abroad, Google is in an absolutely strong position, and operators instead need to actively connect with Google's server rooms. That is to say, website operators do not pay extra fees, and can even ask operators for money to improve user access.

In addition, Google also bought a large number of Dark Fibers and established its own broadband operator Google Fiber to "scare operators" to gain more say. All operators in France once played a game with Google, trying to force the other party to accept a paid rental model similar to the current one in China, but ultimately failed.

This series of operations allows Google to not only save broadband costs but also stably deliver high-quality videos to users, thereby enabling the production of short videos to be infinitely replicated with "huge profits with little investment". YouTube does not need to design high-quality as an "exclusive" for some top celebrities' content, but allows small-town youth to also show high-quality content until some of them become tomorrow's stars, bringing endless vitality to the platform.

@CommentCorp shows a data in the article: In 2009, the data monitoring company Arbor Networks once released a report stating that "YouTube's bandwidth cost is almost zero" - YouTube was almost the only video website in the world at that time, and with 100 billion views, its traffic only accounted for 6% of the entire network traffic.

However, the Google model cannot be replicated in China. There are two reasons for this: First, there is no video company with as strong a say as Google was back then, not even as strong as Netflix is today. Second, domestic telecom operators are more "oligopolistic" than those in the United States, with most resources concentrated in the hands of a few operators, and the upstream is too strong.

In order to understand the first reason, let's take Netflix as an example. Up to today, Netflix has not given users the right to manually adjust the picture quality on the movie playback page. When your network speed is poor but you still insist on watching Netflix, Netflix will prioritize smoothness and then show you an extremely poor picture like a mosaic. Sometimes, users have to exit and re-enter the playback interface to allow the platform to rejudge the network speed and automatically adjust the picture quality.

Netflix defaults to high-quality, but in actual playback, smoothness is prioritized, and users cannot manually adjust the picture quality of the movie they are watching

However, the traffic cost paid by Netflix is even higher. In 2014, Netflix accounted for 32.39% of the total upstream and downstream traffic in North America, while YouTube only accounted for 13.25%. However, YouTube's playback volume and number of users are dozens of times that of Netflix.

In order to understand the second reason, we can explore the information in the financial reports of domestic listed companies. Bilibili's financial report for the first half of 2024 shows that although there were as many as 103 providers that provided bandwidth services to Bilibili in the first half of this year, only 4 of them "provided services that accounted for 10% or more of the Group's server and bandwidth expenses", and these 4 companies accounted for 53% of the expenses.

The strong say of oligopolistic service providers is evident. Not to mention that today's Internet companies no longer have the space to hoard Dark Fibers like Google did back then, even if the same tactics are used again, it is impossible to achieve the effect of competing for the say.

Therefore, providing free and high-quality videos is a very luxurious thing, and it is a miracle that only a giant company can achieve in a special era. Of course, as FilmStorm said, nominally "claiming to be able to provide 4K videos" and selling memberships, but actually cutting corners, is a problem involving the violation of consumers' rights and interests.

Platforms Save Costs, Then What?

Saving bandwidth costs for platforms is a common trend.

Last year, Bilibili's operating cost was 17.1 billion yuan, a 5% decrease from 2022. The financial report mentioned that this decrease "was mainly due to effective cost control measures that led to a reduction in server and bandwidth costs, employee costs, content costs, and other costs."

In 2023, Kuaishou also reduced the bandwidth fee and server hosting cost, from 6.624 billion in 2022 to 5.987 billion in 2023.

Screenshot of Kuaishou's financial report

In order to reduce the broadband cost, iQIYI even tried to carry out unconventional technological innovation - independently developing the HCDN technology, allowing users to share and upload the locally cached videos to other users who are watching the same video while watching the video, thereby achieving an overall 70% reduction in bandwidth cost. Youku Tudou also launched a similar product in 2014.

The bandwidth costs of almost all platforms are completed under the premise of user growth + user usage time growth + video quantity growth in these few years. The burden has increased, but the payment has decreased instead. It can be said that this is a real "impossible triangle". The "substitution" of the picture quality clarity is also an inevitable result.

The video of FilmStorm has brought this topic from under the table to the surface. Many people have begun to discuss what to do if users still hope to see high-quality videos on the premise that platforms are not willing to pay more costs?

First, can the membership fee standard be raised? Facts have proved that it is not feasible. Long-video platforms have already confirmed with the painful lesson of user loss in the previous two years that Chinese viewers are not ready for the membership fee to increase. Moreover, even if the price is raised to nearly 100 yuan per month, this problem still cannot be solved. Netflix mentioned earlier is evidence of this.

Second, like YouTube, can short videos also be added with interstitial ads? It is also unlikely.

Users have different patience for professional and non-professional content. It is against human nature to require users to endure ads before watching "non-professional self-made content". Therefore, YouTube has designed a mechanism that allows skipping interstitial ads, but even so, when interstitial ads first appeared on YouTube, there were also many criticisms overseas. Although the vertical-screen short-video content that slides up and down leaves space for information flow ads, even short-video platforms like Douyin, which has an ad loading rate close to saturation, have also proved with practical actions that it cannot ensure the stability of high-quality.

The video of FilmStorm contains Douyin-related materials

Moreover, the contraction of the advertising market under the current macroeconomic environment and the wave of users' consumption downgrade have also made the "advertisers paying for high-quality for viewers" a wishful thinking.

After the discussion, we will find that it is difficult to find an answer that can coordinate the three parties of service providers, platform parties, and users. Blaming and creating opposition can only vent emotions, but it is not helpful to solve the problem. Perhaps, there will be future solutions to future problems. We are about to enter a world where AI comprehensively improves content, and AI should not only be applied to "splitting the screen and reducing the picture quality" to be smart. What else can the platform do before the new computing method solves the old problem?

Perhaps it is to be open and honest and reduce deception.