YouTube Video Quality Settings (I know there are other threads, but hear me out)

Hi!

I subscribed to W2G-Pro before for a couple of months and now came back, because I use your site on a weekly basis with a friend and would like to support it. It is really great, but there is one thing that is my number one issue since years using W2G and really affects my experience in a negative way.

And this is the video quality setting on W2G (for YouTube).

I have a fast internet connection (see details below, fiber + my notebook is connected via wifi). If I watch directly on YouTube, I can watch on high quality (1080p or more) without a problem. But if I watch videos with a friend on Watch2Gether, it is very often low quality and very pixelated.

Problems:

• The quality setting option on W2G does not seem to do anything. I change it always to 1080p, or try all other options like “large”, 4k etc. But all the settings does not seem to affect the quality in any way, it is more random. Sometimes good, very often bad.

What I tried to solve it:

• deleted cookies / cache in my browser (Firefox on Win10)
• changed browsers to Chrome and Edge

Sometimes after changing it was better, but then worse again. Everything regarding quality seems to be purely random, nothing really solves the problem.

Questions:

• On YouTube you can find an “Auto” setting for playback quality. But there is also the option to choose a specific quality, even if the video stops then from time to time (see link below for a screenshot). If that is available in the YouTube API, you should be able to get it to W2G, so that a specific quality can be forced for playback? That would be great.
• any other suggestions what I could try to solve the problem?

Thanks a lot for any answers!

Pictures (unfortunately I am not allowed to embed them for some reason):
Internet Speed

YouTube Quality Options