I am comparing the maximum quality available. I don't much care that today's 1300kbps video looks better than 2009's 1300kbps video. I care that they used to offer higher quality, and now they don't. I am not bitrate-limited, or at least my bitrate limit is higher than youtube would ever consider going.
What matters is the bitrate, and they're being overly stingy on bitrate.
Ok, this wasn't clear to me. Perhaps it was a video with too few views and thus not considered worth spending storage on? I mean, popular videos on youtube have up to 4K and pretty high bitrate.
seems more like gog/yt shifted bitrate/resolution downwards because pleps demand 4k, and now the "High Definition" version that was good enough for cinemas looks like crap.
What matters is the bitrate, and they're being overly stingy on bitrate.