YouTube is now offering viewers the chance to watch videos in Full HD or 1080p high-definition.
This is an important move not just to support the increasing number of home video cameras with HD options but also to give professional content creators confidence that the platform is right for their work.
YouTube Video Quality
When YouTube first launched four years ago, video quality (360p) on the site wasn’t great. But that wasn’t what the site was about so it didn’t matter. YouTube was there to offer a free and easy way for people to host video online. And it did that so well that Google paid $1.65 billion for the site a year later.
But times move on, as does technology.
YouTube first started offering a ‘High Quality’ (480p) version of some videos, and while the difference wasn’t vast it was noticeable. Then in December 2008 YouTube launched ‘High-Definition’ video, which took the clips to a native 720p.
Full HD On YouTube
Now, after an announcement on the YouTube Blog, the site is starting to offer Full HD of 1080p. There’s already a test video running at that super high quality and the rest of the videos on the site will begin airing in 1080p from next week.
YouTube is in the process of re-encoding all content that has been uploaded at 1080p back to its original resolution. However, there will still be a 720p option available on all videos so as to support viewers who can’t view 1080p without massive lag or hardware problems.
There will still be a 10-minute limit on video uploads but the 2GB size limit will surely be increased to cater for this new breed of high-definition video clips.
Conclusions
This change could have a huge impact in a couple of different ways.
For the average home user of YouTube it’ll make the viewing experience more pleasurable than ever, especially for those watching on HD televisions via their games console, set-top box, or connected laptop.
But more importantly than that, it will surely help YouTube in its quest to entice professional content creators to the site. Some may have been resistant all the while their content was going to look relatively poor, but now it’s widescreen and in Full HD, that reason not to get involved flies out the window.
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