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Youtube offering 720p videos
Aetheri
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For a long time, "youtube quality" has been used as a pejorative. Not any more- youtube is now offering videos in 720p. To try it out, find a suitable video and add &fmt=22 to the end of the url. Note that this doesn't work on all videos, probably since you need a 720p source for this to work and few people have bothered with uploading such videos before. Don't forget to use full screen mode.
Here's a couple examples; the second one might have spoilers for MGS4 in it (I'm not sure since I've never played MGS4):
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=nxy9anViK2w&fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boiHw-cicQo&fmt=22
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hReNT3Le2Mw&fmt=22
There have been high-quality streaming video sites in the past (stage6, dailymotion, etc.), but none with the user base of youtube (that I know of). Although this is apparently "a very old experiment", I think that it deserves some discussion- is this the start of widespread streaming hd video? Or will it remain a neat trick that only a few people know about? And even if youtube chooses not to publicize this or gets rid of it altogether, what will happen when (if?) such things become widespread?
Here's a couple examples; the second one might have spoilers for MGS4 in it (I'm not sure since I've never played MGS4):
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=nxy9anViK2w&fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boiHw-cicQo&fmt=22http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hReNT3Le2Mw&fmt=22
There have been high-quality streaming video sites in the past (stage6, dailymotion, etc.), but none with the user base of youtube (that I know of). Although this is apparently "a very old experiment", I think that it deserves some discussion- is this the start of widespread streaming hd video? Or will it remain a neat trick that only a few people know about? And even if youtube chooses not to publicize this or gets rid of it altogether, what will happen when (if?) such things become widespread?
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But now that it's in 720p, you can make out the crisp, distinct edge of each of the thousands of macroblocks!
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It would be nice if they officially implemented it and optimized it so it didn't suck :P
Usually because the bitrate for "streamed HD" - not the dedicated TV company's networks - is garbage, and reduces everything to a mess of blockyness that conjures up memories of PSX FMVs.
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Man, do I miss Stage6.
Quote for the most truthful thing I've heard all year.
very much agreed. why havnt they sold on their streaming technology
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the MGS4 video was outstanding compared to normal internet-streamed videos. Not quite as good as, like, GameTrailers HD, but pretty close I'd say.
This is because all streaming video except GameTrailers HD is utter garbage, which is decent. It's just you have different levels of garbage-ness. For the most part, poorly performing Flash video with awkward interfaces, quicktime movies and horribly low bitrate WMVs rule the day. Every time I click the small "fullscreen" button on a flash control that looks different on every site and takes a few seconds to get situated, then gobbles up CPU while I watch its clumsily drop frames all over its unhidable seek bar, a part of me dies inside.
I swear to you in 10 years you will all look back in horror at what we were doing with internet video.
But dear lord, this is 2008. You have throngs of people slobbering over FLAC in the audio sphere, scrambling over differences they can't even hear, but no one seems to care about the quality of video playback on the web. It's like we took a solved problem, beat it up and dragged it into the abyss.
And that video seemed fine to me, but then again I never attempt to watch any internet video fullscreen.
Same here. Core 2 duo though.
I forgot about how much I loved Stage6.
In terms of video playback quality, yes it is solved. Media Player back in 2001 on a machine from that day would play back local video files far better than flash on a modern PC.
Stage6 had its own browser plugin for playing DivX files, so it bypassed all the flash nonsense. Plus you could upload HD videos (and I mean real HD videos, like 720p, not HD by flash standards, which is simply passable). Plus it had a built in feature to save any video on the site to your hard drive.
Remember, though, that Netflix is (to my knowledge) topping out at 480p and requires (IIRC) 3MB or so for full quality at that resolution.
But yeah, if you've got the bandwidth it looks perfectly fine.
Yeah, I was just saying that in response to someone who said that streaming video is typically poopy.
Fair enough. Though a membership service should be expected to be better.
What's more impressive to me at least is how decent hulu.com looks most of the time. Being free and all. At least for 480p content, though Doctor Horrible looked just fine at 720p as well. Generally it's a matter of bitrate more than anything.
Didn't you get asked to install their handy-dandy (read: horribly obtrusive, random folder-creating bullshit) software when you tried to watch a video?
DivX player was pretty good, for a 3rd party player, actually.
And really, what else did you want them to do? How else are they supposed to squeeze a codec over the tubes? You need a plugin, any way you look at it.
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I guess my problem is not with Stage6 as a codec. It's with the marketing department telling the developers where to add folders and shortcuts and special offers so that the user can maximize their web-based video viewing experience with Stage6 by DivX. :P
Is Hulu based on Flash? I either haven't had to install a codec to watch videos there, or it's based on Flash and I've already had it installed on each machine before I've visited the site.
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