Go To Latest Video ReviewsYouTube Goes Widescreen
| Author | Gordon Kelly |
| Published | 25th Nov 2008 |
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TrustedReviews NewslettersWhen it's not misleading people about YouTube HD I'll admit to having something of a liking for the Web's biggest video sharing website (urgh, I feel dirty as if I just said I like 'Strictly Come Dancing' or know who John Sergeant is - thankfully I don't and refuse to look it up). So this is rather a pleasant and long overdue development: YouTube is embracing widescreen aspect ratios.
"Over the years we've heard a lot of feedback from you about what you'd like to change about YouTube, and the size of our video player is always top of mind," said the company on its official blog. "That's why today we're excited to announce a bigger YouTube player."
How big? Well, the blog bizarrely doesn't say only explaining that the width of YouTube pages has immediately been expanded to 960 pixels. Despite this a quick measure reveals 16:9 friendly 'Quarter High Definition' (QHD or 640 x 360 pixels) is the order of the day. A standard I now suspect we're all going to become familiar with very fast.
Surprisingly, YouTube didn't go into detail about what minimum or maximum resolution videos the new enlarged player may upload, though it did say existing 4:3 videos will happily work with it (rather obvious). That said, it didn't explain that existing 4:3 videos also now look rather rubbish as shown above (despite the excellent content being broadcast!).
Initial thoughts? Hmmmn, well new owners of all those 'instant' YouTube webcams and camcorders must be feeling pretty narked off...
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Geoff Richards said on 25th November 2008
ilovethemonkeyhead said on 25th November 2008
@ smc8788 - oh shweet :D
now, if only my broadband were faster... sick of seeing loading ring all the time. renders full screen nicely, too.
Gordon said on 26th November 2008
@Pbryanw - "Great, soon I'll be able to watch Chocolate Rain, and The Dramatic Chipmunk in HD"
Well, it's half the way to HD... 720p HD!
Pbryanw said on 26th November 2008
True, only 720P, but it's good enough for me :) And it only seems a short while ago that I was watching postage stamp-sized 33.6kbps video in Realplayer (R.I.P. Realplayer).
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Ah, where TrustedReviews Video Reviews lead, the world follows... we've been using this resolution for our videos for 3 months already :)