YouTube: More to Love
As the prices of professional quality video equipment continue to drop and the number of people with high-speed internet connections continues to increase, online video sites have been scrambling to keep up with their users' desires to deliver higher quality content to their viewers.
YouTube is no different. Today, they announced the latest enhancement to the YouTube platform - a widescreen video format across the site - which they hope will provide users with "a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience."
The new YouTube format increases the traditional YouTube layout to 960 pixels to make space for the widescreen player - which now carries a 16:9 aspect ratio. Videos uploaded at the 4:3 aspect ratio are also presented in 16:9, but to prevent additional distortion, those 4:3 videos will be bracketed by vertical black bars.
And while the widescreen feature - although a dramatic change to the YouTube player we're used to seeing - doesn't really give rise to speculation, the combined series of recent upgrades to YouTube certainly do. First there was the high-definition video, then the live streaming, and now the widescreen. You have to wonder what Google has up their sleeve for this property. Or maybe you don't. Maybe it's obvious.
Clearly, Google can't be putting all of this effort into YouTube simply for bringing MGM movies to the Web. Can it? Isn't there likely something more happening? I would think so. But what does YouTube have in store? More movies? Television? Live sports? Hard to say. But it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to conjure up images of another room in which YouTube's widescreen HD content could be living. Keyword there being "living."
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haha, Youtube is very useful. It may displace the TV someday.
Yup. Thats for sure. Even today the time i spend with Youtube is more than the TV. Tv is just for some instant updates.
Looking forward to see the TV Channels Broadcasts soon in Youtube :D
The Quality of the video is yet to be improved in Youtube compare to Blip.tv or Vimeo
This is obviously just for landscape media players....
Heard of the iPhone anyone? Or that Blackberry thing?
This isn't a play for television at all.
It's great that they support widescreen now and I'm surprised they took so long. I don't really like that the old videos play with black bars now and with the increased player height it makes lower quality videos look really ugly.
Not necessarily, Lincoln. As you may have heard, you can now get HD versions of some YouTube videos (what causes this to happen isn't clear). And just to clarify, that's 720p HD — not the higher quality YouTube videos that've been around for months.
Because 720p HD is a widescreen format, this change does quite strongly indicate that YouTube is planning to fully embrace HD broadcasts. That does take a hell of a lot more bandwidth and such though on site of YouTube's scale, and YouTube supposedly isn't doing that well with the money anyway. Perhaps it'll only be offered to premium uploaders or something.
Shame it's a decade late to the party. 1280x720 really ought to be the baseline these days as the minimum requirement for HD. Given that sub-$100 cameras are capable of spitting this stuff out, 960x540 feels somewhat... oldskool.
Widening You tube definitely adds more to You tube .Viewers from now on feel comfortable with watching you tube in wide screen .
YouTube is really changing the face of the film industry. The deal with MGM and Screening Room are key examples of how Google is reaching out to the film industry. They can really help indie filmmakers by having these features.
IndieGoGo.com is a site where filmmakers can get their films funded. The face of the industry is changing. A site like IndieGoGo can really help filmmakers get their films made, and YouTube can really help filmmakers get their films seen.