When it came out, YouTube was seen as the best thing that had ever happened to the Web. Suddenly, it was easy to watch videos online, and uploading and embedding became, for the first time ever, a doddle. No wonder Google pounced on it like a starving coyote.
Fast forward a couple of years, and YouTube had begun to look like the MySpace of the video sites. It's got its carbon copies, such as DailyMotion, but companies like Vimeo have taken Chad Hurley and Steve Chen's ball and run with it--for miles.
Until today. A cheeky little announcement on the YouTube blog states that the site will soon be supporting 1080p HD videos. Yes. Big. Videos. And Great quality. "As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content." (Translation: we've been a bit deer-in-the-headlights about our competition, so try this for size.")
Fans of bigger, harder, faster, stronger computers will be pleased to know that the service will be up and running next week. To see the difference, watch the video below to see just how much more snuffly and wet Pennie the Jack Russell's nose is in HD.
[Via YouTube Blog]
Related Stories: | Topics:Technology, youtube, 1080p hd, chad hurley, steve chen, YouTube LLC, Science and Technology, Technology, Internet, Internet Broadcasting |
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Recent Comments | 7 Total
November 13, 2009 at 2:27pm by Will Godfrey
That "1080p" test video seems a little strange to me. I have a Mac Mini connected to a true 1080p LCD and watching that video full screen doesn't look any better than watching 480p television. It looks nothing like a true 1080p signal. Granted it does look better than most YouTube video, I think calling it 1080p is a marketing ploy at best. Seems to me that YouTube is trying to pull a fast one. Vimeo's HD looks much better full screen on my TV then that Dog. Lets hope once this is released, it will actually look HD. Just because it looks better than standard YouTube quality doesn't make it HD. If only the people at YouTube understood that.
November 13, 2009 at 3:52pm by Wedding Dances
Sounds good, but I wanna see how it looks when it comes out
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http://www.BestWeddingDances.com/
November 14, 2009 at 9:26am by Tyler Gray
You know, when I hunted this video down, followed Google's own link, I questioned it myself. I wonder whether they worded things strangely on their original post about the upgrade and whether this wasn't meant to truly showcase the new capabilities. Anyway, they're the ones implementing the tech. They shouldn't have put it out there if they didn't want us to judge. Thanks for the comments.
November 14, 2009 at 9:30am by Tyler Gray
Oh, just figured something out. Go to the original YouTube location of the vid, click the HD view button and blow it up to full screen. That's sort of where the magic is, in full-screen mode. There are moments when the hairs on the dog's nose are finally in focus (seems like a camera issue), and they look pretty sharp. Still...
November 15, 2009 at 8:02am by Steve Elliott
It seems like a shaggy dog story to me!
It has to be progress on YouTube's part, although I can't begin to imagine what their storage and bandwidth requirements will end up being? We, as users, also need to catch up with suitable quick connections to make it work.
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http://www.gadgets4nowt.co.uk - The name says it all!
November 15, 2009 at 1:58pm by Ryan Sloan
I am one of the founders of CloudCraft Television (www.cloudcraft.tv) and we have current technology, we call Cinema Definition, that allows us to display at Source Quality upto 1080p and 5.1 Surround Sound including DTS, and all that without any downloading or buffering from the client machine. Our problem, as a startup, is trying to get enough attention to secure more content, and raising the revenue necessary to streamline the technology and make it easier to use. Only one player currently works with our stream and clients need at least 10 mbps Internet Speed to be able to watch the stream without it stopping. The greatest thing about our technology is the picture quality is better than DVD and can be connected to a television of any size without any loss of resolution. www.cloudcraft.tv, boxoffice@cloudcraft.tv
December 10, 2009 at 6:14pm by Bobbi Woods
As a person who owns two computers, one which is sort of dodgy and works great, but is from before the millenium and although I keep it clean as a whistle, no need to replace it yet, the other being a new netbook armed with lots of great graphics support and RAM sufficient to do many things at once, I can safely say that YouTube is doing just fine with what they have, as I've noticed a dramatic increase in the quality of their videos. I know my teeny little voice will not be enough to change that, but at the same time, I hope that they will remember there are still those of us out there who do not give two farts about hi-def nonsense, as it usually brings some systems to a crawl anyway (yes, even my new machine prefers when I view lower-quality videos--WHEN they are available).
I realize that I'm a minority on this issue, but as a computer geek, I'm one of the rare few consumers in the US who can keep a machine from 1999 running smoothly and not having to buy a new computer every 6-12 months due to accidentally clicking on too many of those silly, "Hey, you have a virus! Fix it here!" malware banner ads on the Interwebs.
Just my $.02