YouTube launched on February 14, 2005, and as a result, the videos on the site are low-resolution. Classic videos like Chocolate Rain, Afro Ninja, and Evolution of Dance only have a 360p resolution that looks really ugly on TV screens. YouTube today announced that they will begin gradually upscaling old videos to HD using artificial intelligence (AI).
Videos with resolutions below 1080p will be upscaled first with a plan to later increase them to 4K. Videos upgraded using AI will receive a “Super Resolution” label in the resolution options menu. Video owners are given the option to not allow YouTube to upscale their videos. The original videos at lower resolutions will still be viewable.
With YouTube’s increasing use on TVs, the YouTube app interface will be updated to be more user-friendly on large screens. The top will feature moving videos with a moving carousel showing other content that can be watched. The YouTube interface on TV will be similar to other streaming platforms, especially Netflix.
Finally, the thumbnail file size for videos has now been increased to 50MB from 2MB so that sharp, up to 4K thumbnails can be displayed when content is accessed using the TV app.
