YouTube has been in the streaming business for 20 years, but it's only gotten to this point in the last couple of years. dominate television. Google's video platform attracts more TV viewers than Netflix, Disney+ and all other apps, and Google is looking to further deepen its appeal on the big screen with new features including shopping, immersive channel viewing and an official version of AI upscaling that its creators complained about months ago.
According to GoogleYouTube's growth has led to increased payouts. The number of channels earning more than $100,000 per year grew 45 percent in 2025 compared to 2024. YouTube is now giving creators some tools to increase their exposure (and hopefully income) on TV. These carefully crafted video thumbnails featuring surprised, angry and smiling presenters are made even more beautiful with the new 50MB file size limit. That's down from a measly 2MB.
Video scaling will also be coming to YouTube and will be enabled automatically by creators. To begin with, YouTube will upscale lower quality videos to 1080p. In the near future, Google plans to support “super resolution” up to 4K.
The site emphasizes that it does not modify the original files—creators will have access to both the original and enlarged files, and they can refuse scaling. In addition, ultra-high definition videos will be clearly labeled on the user side, allowing viewers to select the original download if they so choose. Lack of transparency has been a stumbling block for authors, some of whom complained about the sudden artificial look of their videos during YouTube testing earlier this year.
