Viddyou, a video sharing site that launched almost a year ago as a platform for video bloggers, today rolls out support for high definition video and adds a $35/yr premium membership option for power users.

On the surface, Viddyou looks like many of the other video sites out there. But it has so far managed to foster a community that seeks refuge from the masses over at YouTube. Co-founder Aaron Wadler says that Viddyou’s contributers enjoy the site’s extensive privacy controls and lack of both advertisements and trolls. It’s a place where they feel comfortable sharing videos of their children and grandparents, or posting more personal video blogs for and about their friends.

Today’s additions are meant to continue that focus on quality over quantity. The high definition video comes in both 720p and 1080p, a first for video sharing sites we’re told (Vimeo provides only 720p). Both look great to the untrained eye, and 1080p might be too processor intensive for most computers anyway. We’ve embedded a 720p video from Viddyou below since 1080p would probably chug and skip for many readers.

ViddYou users who want to upload in HD will need to pay for the premium membership, which will also let them download copies of their videos and upload videos of unlimited length (the free version only allows 5 minutes each).

Competitors include Motionbox, Vimeo, and Mydeo, three other services that focus on video sharing for friends and family.

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Word on the street is that Best Buy – which already had photo-sharing through Kodak – didn’t want a combined photo/video service and, incredibly enough, couldn’t find a US-based company that could do what they wanted. However, I have a hunch that since Mydeo is built on Microsoft’s Movie Maker software there may have been some useful introductions made at Microsoft level. Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the US, sells around a third of all video cameras sold each year. Significantly, a large percentage of those are sold to Mydeo’s target audiences of families and small businesses, who tend to use Movie Maker. Hey, it may not be cool, but it’s a fact.

Whatever the details of the deal, it’s a good one for Mydeo’s co-founders Cary Marsh and Iain Millar, who started out in 2005 from a small South West London office with local municipal grants.

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