DailyMotion Adds HD Video - Is YouTube Falling Behind?
Leading French video sharing site DailyMotion announced this morning that it is now supporting HD video upload and playback. It follows art-video site Vimeo, where HD was added in October.
YouTube's Steve Chen told Liz Gannes and Om Malik in November that YouTube is not focused on enabling HD as much as they are on universal access. His statements were a bit unclear though. A substantial group of outspoken video producers seem determined to demand HD for their work, but Chen contends that short form online video isn't a suitable setting for HD.
That said, Chain also confirmed that the company is looking at bandwidth detection and other steps that could enable some viewers to watch HD. That's what DailyMotion and Vimeo have done. Likewise, Chen's contention that he wants to watch HD on his couch not online doesn't seem to jive so well with a the direction that some people see the market going in - towards watching online video on the couch. Perhaps Chen doesn't see things going that way. There certainly isn't much imperative for YouTube to be ahead of the curve these days, feature wise, but are they missing out on an important opportunity in being slow to adopt HD?
Given the percentage of views on the site that come from professionally produced content like music videos, I can only imagine it's a matter of time until YouTube goes HD.
Vimeo isn't a competitor numbers wise around the world, but they do host some very high quality content. DailyMotion is a significant competitor for viewer numbers, outside the US at least. The company has raised more than $40 million in venture backing. Below is a sample of DailyMotion's HD content, already in a larger player than the embed code offers by default. Video consumption is a pliable thing, to some degree that's true even for the lowest common denominator of YouTube viewers. I think YouTube should offer HD.
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I agree. I've long felt that other video sites were pulling ahead of YouTube in terms of features and interface design, but YouTube has the name ID and momentum. HD is certainly important for longer videos, but even on shorter ones, it's not irrelevant. My latest laptop has a screen resolution of 1400x1050, so even a DVD-quality video looks tiny.
I wonder if YouTube could lose their status by staying behind the curve for too long... at this point not offering HD isn't going to dent their market share much, but if other sites continues to build features and eventually leave YouTube scrambling, they may no longer be the darling of online video. (Even if HD isn't a deal, user perception may make it one.) We've seen other high-flying Internet companies wane in the past - YouTube needs to stay on the cutting edge to avoid a similar fate as paradigms shift.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | February 18, 2008 9:02 AM
So, Youtube is late on that one.. may it balance the forces, it's good for competition, it's good for users, especially when a company outside the US performs well. Congrats frenchies.
Posted by: cedric | February 18, 2008 9:36 AM
Generally it takes a hell of a long time for quality and format to make a big difference in the popularity of a service with the momentum of YouTube. Look at how long we've been suffering with reduced quality DRM media from the iTunes Store, and that's not even a free service! Besides which, as HD support from the upcoming Flash video player becomes more ubiquitous, YouTube should be able to switch this on with relative ease.
That said, I'm with cedric that it would be nice to see a little diversity.
Posted by: Jay Moonah | February 18, 2008 9:46 AM
One thing that is nice about YouTube is being able to watch the video on my TV via my Nintendo Wii's browser! ;) One benefit of it being in an old Flash 7 compatible video format!
Asides from that though I upload my footage to Vimeo due to the better quality it offers.
Posted by: Rick Curran | February 18, 2008 9:59 AM
i really don't see the regular youtube users (meaning my mom, neighbor, cousin) screaming about HD quality. We're talking clips here, and we want to be able to see them fast so we can see as much as we possibly can.
I can see why YouTube isn't focusing on this (but please don't mistake that for them not working on, which i'm sure they are...). It's not in demand. When 3 or 4 out of 10 users start saying "Hey we want High Def!" then they can start putting more resources into it.
I am not really familiar with DailyMotion, but if they have longer format content, then I guess the HD "option" isn't a bad thing.
Posted by: drew olanoff | February 18, 2008 11:59 AM
Youtube doesn't even support normal DVD resolution with stereo audio, much less HD...
Posted by: anon | February 18, 2008 12:08 PM
I tried so called HD Video of daily motion. I use a bigass 1 gigabit line via SurfNet in Netherlands and Dailymotion says that: "Heyyy buddy, your internet connection seems to be slow. You must have at least 2Mb line for HD bla bla. Do you want to switch to standart view?". Sorry Dailymotion guys, I think there is scalibility problems...
Posted by: Kemal | February 18, 2008 12:19 PM
YouTube can take as long as they want. People watch videos for the content. They are use to crappy quality. YouTube has the most content that people enjoy and that's what matters. Should they upgrade in the future? Of course, but falling behind? Heh.
Posted by: Scrivs | February 18, 2008 12:34 PM
Oops, you wrote 'Chain' instead of 'Chen' somewhere?
Does this put me in the running for best comment? :)
Posted by: Robin Wauters | February 18, 2008 1:18 PM
Oops, you wrote 'Chain' instead of 'Chen' in the beginning of the 3rd paragraph.
Does this put me in the running for best comment? :)
Posted by: Robin Wauters | February 18, 2008 1:18 PM
Related:
Have you noticed all of the cool viewing features a DailyMotion embed offers nowadays? Full screen! What really bugs me about YouTube? A YouTube embed doesn't offer full-screen. :(
I've actually been watching a lot more DailyMotion recently:
1) Almost all of the same UGC content is there too (at least the popular clips, since most "serious" creators spread their videos to the top 5-10 sites)
2) They have most of the same content deals / premium content
3) Playback is fast, just like YouTube
4) Player is better
5) Full-screen embeds and a host of other embed features.
6) Now HD!
Posted by: Frank Sinton | February 18, 2008 10:41 PM
"art-video site Vimeo", come on! Online video is a niche market still. No one in their right mind would be looking for a niche in a niche market. Vimeo is more like Flickr IMHO It has tagging, albums and channels. But you have full control over who sees your video as well. Like Flickr you can connect with friends as well. I have nothing to do with Vimeo by the way, I just think Vimeo is amazing... I'm 'just' a satisfied customer.
Posted by: dc crowley | February 18, 2008 10:44 PM
You missed a big reason why YouTube would be mad to go down this HD route; namely bandwidth costs. With the new Flash codec HD's no big deal - when the time's such that YouTube need to do HD it'll be as simple as flicking the switch.
Dailymotion are trying to differentiate themselves at the moment, and aren't really focused on making the figures stack up. Commercialisation will feature later I guess, when the $40m starts to run out. Delivering in HD means that'll probably be sooner rather than later...
Posted by: Jack | February 21, 2008 1:48 PM
I'm amazed YouTube can even pull off the traffic they serve now. According to my last calculations, for the YouTube website alone, they close in on the 25 petabytes of traffic EACH DAY.
Offering the higher bandwidth option, let's say Flash 9 H.264 content at 600-850 kbit/s, their traffic bill would be doubled almost instantly. They'd go from 25 to 50 petabytes/day in just a few weeks time. I don't know of many hardware and backbone providers that can pull off such a jump fluently. But then, they're Google. Maybe they can.
I just hope, with their user-base and footprint (Nr.2 on Alexa worldwide!) they stay on the right side with their hearts and minds, and try to keep it somewhat human, instead of a humongous robotic video-offering effort where none of your uploaded material is safe (meaning they take it off for any small type of complaint and such). Power this big is dangerous, very dangerous.
YouTube should, in my opinion, change into some type of taxed community service; Each user's channel/profile should be entirely fully under the user's control. Maybe even served from home if broadband speeds keep growing the way they do now. I truly think the only way to offer true HD worldwide large-scale is by changing the data-streams into a peer-to-peer-casting protocol.
Posted by: Jules Sans Scrupules | February 27, 2008 8:08 PM
You want to see a preview version of YouTube HD (higher definition), check this web site, you can search view and download :
http://www.ilikeyoutube.com/index-hd.php
Enjoy.
Posted by: Webcreation | March 18, 2008 6:11 AM