YouTube has just launched a new portion of its site dedicated to HD content, allowing users to easily browse through what is now the largest archive of high definition content on the web. The move has been a long time coming – in the last few weeks the site has been gradually building up to a large scale HD launch with the introduction of a 16:9 video player and the ability to watch HD on selected videos, but until this point it has been difficult to separate the HD content from videos encoded at YouTube’s normal resolution.
In conjunction with launching the new HD section, YouTube has also started displaying HD movies in a large video player that takes up nearly the entire browser window without going into the sometimes-annoying full screen mode. To see a demo of the new player in action, check out the Where The Hell Is Matt Video.
YouTube has also released a set of topical portals related to News, Music, and Movies. Each portal uses a different set of data to surface the most popular YouTube videos of the moment: News culls recent news videos from Google News, while Music monitors popular playlists, rising songs, and artists. Perhaps most notable is the Movies portal, which features movies from both the site’s studio partners (like MGM) as well as indie films.
Along with the full launch of HD and the larger player, the new Movies section marks YouTube’s biggest step towards taking on sites like Hulu. While users have been able to search for movies in the past, YouTube’s new portal offers a more comprehensive listing with a sexier interface and spots for ‘featured’ films. Don’t be surprised if they a launch a similar portal dedicated to Television shows in the near future (in October the site rolled out full-length shows provided by CBS).
Youtube Number One
HD required 
http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
the link in the first comment is spam
The link to Matt’s video in the post is broken.
“The URL contained a malformed video ID.”
Try http://www.yout...h?v=zlfKdbWwruY
and click “Watch in HD”
Pretty sweat quality.
They need to do something about the page layout, though — looks like they woke up an engineer at 5AM and screamed, “WE NEED HD NOW FIX THE PAGE FIX THE PAGE FIX THE PAGE.”
What do you think it should look like?
Beats me, I ain’t no UI guy.
You still have to *click* watch in HD – they have not defaulted to HD yet. This is important because most people won’t click the HD link.
I agree, you should be able to turn on HD quality, and it would remain in HD mode from that point on. It’s silly to have to keep pressing “watch in HD” or “high quality”, from every video. Also, I once saw a “turn the lights off” button at the top of the video player. The button darkened everything around the video, similar to how the dvix web player works.
YouTube is now beginning to transition into a larger format video, Movies, TV Shows, Concerts. Now if they really want to stay competitive they need to serve better ads.
If they want to compete with HULU They should begin using demographics data in conjunction with comment analysis, and analyzing the inbound links to determine the content of the video. As a YouTube partner nothing is more frustrating then seeing Colgate overlays on my videos.
Would be good to be able to choose a default setting; however YouTube just recently (last few weeks) changed a setting whereby every time you visit the site, you have to log in. Used to remember you and keep you logged in to your channel. Preferred the way it was.
YouTube has a video playback quality setting.
Step 1: Log in to YouTube and go here… http://www.yout...layback/quality
Step 2: Choose “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available.”
Step 3: Save changes and enjoy.
TL
http://jamtopia.com/
So, uhm, how do I see a high-quality video without having it huge at the same time? There seems nothing in between now…
If you’re using Firefox, just hit command/control and minus a few times. Works great.
Ha ha. That’s what you did on your brain, too, isn’t it?
Wow, finally. We were just on the hunt for a better video player for our http://tv.smibs.com and found imeem.com the best all around. I guess now we’ve got to re-consider.
Still a fan of Vimeo. It’s nice to see youtube actually do something. I swear the site has barely changed in four years.
youtube should implement a contrast button, really helps for bad quality videos.
Great stuff, Youtube is defiantly going in the correct direction.
Great…YT is finally getting better quality and a 16:9 vs. 4:3 ratio…
..unfortunately, you can’t REUPLOAD a better quality version and keep all your stats like views, comments, etc. too…
OR CAN YOU?
Take a look at that picture. Where the Hell is Matt has 14 million views. I’m pretty sure he didn’t get all those since YT switched to HD.
Once again, YT caters only to the most popular videos/users and screws anyone not close to 14 million views out of legitimate revisions to our work.
*sigh*
Well, I uploaded a video about a month ago at full HD quality and when YouTube went 16:9 it just automatically popped into place, and then today I noticed that my video had a “HD” button and when I clicked it, boy was I surprized to see me full rez video. It actually blows the Matt video away in terma of quality.
Check it out:
http://www.yout...h?v=iWXhtDa94kQ
Here are the settings I used:
H.264, 1920 x 1080, Millions
16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo, 48.000 kHz
29.97 fps
8.04 mbits/s data rate
Ok, I’m retard, can you link me “Movies Portal”?
http://www.youtube.com/movies
increasing the video resolution would be very expensive for youtube but its a mast as they are very aggressively moving their partners ad supported network.
So after enjoying HD stuff on tv.com and hulu.com (most in 480p) … YouTube is looking a bit weak!
The HD is cool, but HD Hollywood content would be a ton better!
Fox.com & ABC.com have done HD streaming for a LONG time now and it far surpasses the YouTube quality.
I wonder what’s the carbon footprint of that guy?
When are they going to have an option to turn off that stupid drop down search bar?
At last they finally put separate section for HD videos that’s great.
This is great… now I got to re-render all of our companies 200 3D animations to HD quality. The work never stops does it
Jon
http://WoodMarvels.com – Create Unique Memories
All the increase in quality isn’t going to mean anything if the ads keeps popping up in very annoying spots and disturbs the viewing experience.
And the “Religion” category gets totally forgotten again. I swear, every time I need that category…
Oh this is classic.
YouTube finally gets the music portal going and Warner Music pulls out of their licensing deal two days later!
http://www.ft.c...0077b07658.html
Too bad Warner couldn’t wait to see if the new music portal would have put YouTube in a better position (i.e. able to monetize the pageviews) to pay the licensing fees.
Oh well. I’m sure the videos will be back soon enough anyway. And I can’t wait. Already jonesin’ for some Goo Goo Dolls*.
TL
http://jamtopia.com/
* not true
Oh this is classic.
YouTube finally gets the music portal going and Warner Music pulls out of their licensing deal two days later!
http://www.ft.c...0077b07658.html
Too bad Warner couldn’t wait to see if the new music portal would have put YouTube in a better position (i.e. able to monetize the pageviews) to pay the licensing fees.
Oh well. I’m sure the videos will be back soon enough anyway. And I can’t wait. Already jonesin’ for some Goo Goo Dolls*.
TL
http://jamtopia.com/
* not true
wow, that really makes a lot of difference! quite an improvement:)
Good news.
i like HD video,and I have found a way to download HD video,
http://www.down...downloader/#137
Now i can view HD video on our pc.
can someone please help me get my video to play automatically in HD?
http://www.yout...h?v=TWXJ8DZMOKU