YouTube, every computer user’s joy and employer’s sorrow, has taken the step into the HD era. From offering movies in “high quality” YouTube has moved on to actually offering videos in high definition. There wasn’t any real official statement, but over the last few weeks more and more videos at YouTube have been appearing at native HD resolution. It might be a bit tricky knowing if you’re watching in HD as the text says “watch in high quality” when it is the high resolution SD format and watch in HD with the new 720p HD format.
Even if YouTube’s “high quality” mode was a big improvement it is nothing compared to the new 720p format. These are still streaming videos so YouTube doesn’t allow for very high bitrates, but with H264 and 1280×720 pixels resolution the difference is like night and day.
At TechVideoBlog.com they’ve published a short comparison between the different video sites using high resolution Flash videos that shows that Facebook HD and Youtube HD are the ones offering best quality right now.
Below are a couple of videos with the new 720p format at Youtube (go to YouTube via the videos to activate the HD mode)
This is a Youtube 720P HD TEST!
720p HD: Elephants Dream
“Weird Al” Yankovic – It’s All About The Pentiums
