So I pay for premium and have noticed this on ALL my computers, I always select the 1080p Premium Bit rate but frequently it gets reverted back to 720p for some odd reason and randomly it appears.
There doesn’t seem to be any cause as to why this happens and nothing in the settings will force 1080p Premium as the default either 
Any ideas on this one ?
Many, many years ago I think I remember a setting to ‘prefer HD’ (basic, not premium) but I don’t remember seeing it last time I was in the options. I think even back then it didn’t force HD and this could still happen. I believe (but can’t prove) google is doing that intentionally in the hopes that most people won’t notice and change it back to save on bandwidth. I don’t have premium and the same basic thing used to happen to me all the time (1080 to 720 or even 480), and eventually after changing it back manually immediately every time it happened (or even to 4k if available out of spite, despite just a 1080 display), it seems to have stopped.
@Klaustrophobia thanks for the feedback, I’ve been doing this since I first subscribed to Premium a few months back and it still happens randomly
does statsForNerds (context / right click menu) show filled “connection speed” bar, long (60s) buffer, and consistent blips on the network activity?
it should have a good speed (number should be consistent) and it should download chunks of a bunch of seconds playtime at a go
@Trooper_ish ah thanks, testing this out now on some random vids now.
Hmm, not seeing anything out of the ordinary with the stats for nerds, was keeping an eye on any drops but only noticed 2 or 3 with each video.
usually the video quality drops when the player can’t give you a buffer free experience.
This can happen on newly uploaded or really obscure videos that is not cached in a server near you.