Higher Video Quality for YouTube Arrives
April 7th, 2008 Posted in technologyYouTube appear to be rolling out an option allowing users to watch videos in higher quality than before (example).
Not all source videos uploaded will be high quality/definition (cell phone video etc), but it appears that when a high quality video is uploaded to YouTube several conversions are now being made. This allows users with fast internet connections to watch the high quality version.
Sites, such as Putfile, that have had high quality video streaming functionality (example) for over a year have now lost an edge over YouTube which previously swayed some users to register on their site rather than YouTube.
With YouTube providing free high quality video streaming, revenue sharing, groups, and various other features; the days of UGC video sites popping up quickly or established non-niche sites even surviving are surely numbered.
2 Responses to “Higher Video Quality for YouTube Arrives”
By Phil on Apr 7, 2008
Geeze, that guy is annoying. A true HD in 1080i/p would be a good goal to reach but unlike HD trailers on the Apple site, YouTube video’s aren’t always uploaded in HD format. Besides, how many ‘home users’ have HD equipment for filming with in the first instance?
It’s a good step forward but likely to come from business/record labels first.
By gordonrp on Apr 7, 2008
It will be a while until full “HD” streaming is a standard, but Youtube’s previous encoding settings lost a lot of quality even from a SD camera etc. So this improvement in quality is a great step forward.
Dailymotion.com offer free 720p HD streaming.
My point being not that YouTube are closer to HD offering, but they are much better off with this rollout as their previous encoding settings were a turn off for many people.