YouTube announced that starting next week they will be adding support for full
1080p videos. "As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make
sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content," the
announcement said.
"For viewers with big
monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the
fullscreen experience."
Sounds great, right? But 1080p videos are going to take significantly more bandwidth, and some are already complaining about buffering delays. Another issue is that in an attempt to keep bandwidth down, YouTube appears to be lowering the audio quality noticeably. They also limit the audio sampling to 44Khz @ 16 bit rather than 48Khz.
In our look at their sample video the quality was beautiful but it was jerky with frequent pauses. To be fair, though, there were probably lots of others like us trying to watch the only 1080p sample available right now. Our numbers seemed to indicate around 3.6mbps and 128kbps audio. There may be some pressure to improve quality from their new partners at CBS, MGM, Sony, Lions Gate Entertainment, and the BBC.
This is a perfect opportunity to find out if your broadband provider is really giving the advertised throughput. No word from YouTube on whether they expect users to restrict 1080p to uploads of things we actually want to see clearly.
Quayzar
November 13, 2009 at 6:59pm
So in order to get higher quality video they are down sampling audio more significantly. Frankly I would rather have better audio and 720p video as 1080p video is great on a big screen but on computer it's unecessary however several songs sound terrible at 128kbps 44Khz. For example listen to 128kpbs MP3 of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin or Daughter by Pearl Jam and you will hear compression artifacts that would make the songs nearly unenjoyable. Until bandwidth technology catches up I would rather see the audio less compressed but video at a lower resolution. However the fact that I have to watch videos in flash in the first place bothers me more than the sound quality issues.
