Do ISPs throttle stream quality?

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I have been using both Airtel Xstream Fiber and Tata Play Fiber since a long time. Recently due to the glitches in Tata, I opted for a 100 Mbps backup line from Airtel Xstream Fiber. Here are a few strange things I noticed:

1. When streaming content on netflix, somehow the content looks better when streaming via Airtel Xstream Fiber while on Tata Play Fiber, it looks a bit washed off. My Tata Play connection is a 200 Mbps line while the Airtel is only 100 Mbps. In order to rule out ambiguity, I have setup both the connections in bridge mode and dialed up PPPoE from the same router.
When streaming HDR content on netflix, a small HDR logo pops up on my LG TV. When connected to Airtel, the HDR logo pops up immediately as soon as I hit the play button while on Tata Play, it takes two to five seconds. Honestly it doesn't make much of a difference but I was wondering if ISPs throttle streaming quality or bitrate?

2. When playing youtube video on different devices, while being connected to Airtel, the video plays at the maximum resolution supported by the device while on tata play, it usually starts playing at 720p and I have to manually set it to 1080p or 4k.

The purpose of this thread is not to criticise one ISP or praise another, I just want to know why exactly does this happen? Does it have to do something with caching or peering? or routing? Afaik, netflix and other OTTs have CDN in order to reduce buffer time and improve stream quality. Does netflix have better peering with Airtel than Tata Play?
Tata Play advertises themselves as number 1 ISP by netflix btw.

I didn't notice any difference on any other OTT. Tried to do this multiple times and even my dad said that the stream looks much better on Airtel. Both connections are in bridge mode, dialed up from the same router(Asus AX5400) and the same ONT(Nokia). Tata Play Fiber is on the 200 Mbps plan and Airtel is on 100 Mbps plan. Both connections hit the plan speeds everytime on fast.com as well as ookla(if that matters).
 
Youtube is weird. It depends on some combination of unknown factors, and then it decides what quality it plays on. I run bsnl (primary) and airtel (failover option) via openwrt and regardless of isp sometimes youtube starts at full quality and sometimes it starts at 360p. (only youtube.com stably selects the highest quality always)

As for netflix, no idea. Does it seem like it's a lower resolution HDR experience on tata play, or what is the discerning factor?
 
i think it has more to do with your router. When i used to use a Huawei ax3 with oem firmware as main router i used to get 720p initially on youtube then manually had to change to 4k or 1080p. Then i flashed my archer c6 with openwrt and used it as my main router then i got 4k initially on all videos. (All were ran on bsnl 300mbps)
 
I have Airtel Xstream Fiber 300 Mbps connection which I'm using with the xx530v router, and for me youtube videos always start in 720p quality and after 30 seconds or so the quality increases to the maximum quality of that video. I don't know exactly what criteria youtube uses to decide that in which quality the video should play and all.
 
For YouTube in desktop browser, you can use add-ons to force higher quality every single time. Few days ago in Excitel all vidoes were loading at 480p but showed 1080p auto. Pichai is behaving like a baniya and saving bandwidth by intentionally streaming low quality by default I bet.

 
I don't think it has anything to do with hardware. It's more of a ISP issue, might be some routing issue I suppose. Anyway it doesn't matter much tbh, I just noticed it since last couple of days so thought of sharing.
 
Some ISPs' download speed slowly increases to the plan speed, and this also vary from place to place and server to server. So, maybe that's the reason for it.

I am not sure though.

I usually see highest resolution instantly on desktop and 720p on my phone, in both local ISP and JioFiber.
 
Tata play fiber gives 300 Mbps speed on a 200 Mbps plan, so I don't think it has anything to do with speed, and yes fyi, it touches 300 instantly.
 
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