YouTube finally goes HD

I noticed today, when I was looking for the Ghostbusters game trailer that there was “(HD)” on the end of the title. I was intrigued as YouTube doesn’t (didn’t) play HD videos in High Definition. But recently YouTube did announce they were going widescreen. The only real reason for that is so they videos shown on YouTube match the current and proper aspect ratio (16:9). Which coincidently is very similar to the aspect ratio of HD video.

So I went to the Ghostbusters trailer and under the video there is sometimes a “watch in higher quality” button. It’s normally available when a video that is uploaded has the correct bit rate and quality etc. But on this video there was “Watch in HD”.

This is a big step for YouTube both in the UI and quality of videos but also in the infrastructure improvements needed to stream and play HD videos. Obviously they are not full 1080p video as the chances are most people don’t have the bandwidth, processing power or the resolution to stream HD video.

This is the trailer I was looking for. Watch it in HD by going to the video page and selecting “Watch in HD”.

Source: TechCrunch, Stuff We Like, Engadget, gHacks, Squidoo

2 Comments to YouTube finally goes HD

1. 

   Thanks for this. http://techjuicer.com/ is now in my feed reader, I’ll keep and eye out for your next story. I like the layout of your site, nice and clean and easy to read. Thakns.
Akmed on December 7th, 2008

2. [...] YouTube embracing HD with open arms and allowing users to watch HD video in a small video player, they have given us a massive video player to watch these HD videos. When [...]
YouTube launches massive HD video player | TechJuicer on December 19th, 2008

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