YouTube getting 1080p video next week

It wasn't all that long ago when YouTube moved past the grainy, low-resolution limitations they started with and began offering "High Quality" video streaming. With high-speed broadband becoming ubiquitous and capable of supporting higher quality streams, people want more -- and Google is set to deliver. Starting next week, YouTube will begin offering the ability to upload and stream 1080p resolution videos, making fullscreen YouTube a pleasing possibility.

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Right on. Getting tired of watching YouTube videos where you could barely tell what was going on because the quality was awful. If the technology is available, then let's use it!

"...YouTube is going to automatically sort through their entire library and bump up any content that is 1080p to the full viewing experiencing..."

That's a great move. I think Youtube is due for an overhaul, and this is a good start!

There current HD looked decent but sometimes streaming was slow. I hope they payed the bills on more bandwidth and storage space cuz there gonna need it.

It's still flash based video.

YouTube should really get rid of Flash and make their own hardware accelerated player (like the DivX Web Player Stage6 used to have), or switch to Silverlight with Smooth Streaming (watch an example here: http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming1080p ) so that their users don't need an i7 processor to watch a HD video.

Eh, I'll see it when it's released, but is Youtube technically 720p even now?

When I run a game windowed at 1280x720, it takes up more screen space than "Youtube HD"

So it's not actually 720p since it does not actually have 1280x720 pixels, correct?

a lot of misinformation in this thread.

first off, youtube has had h.264/aac audio for well over a year now, so there is absolutely no need for divx or silverlight.

and yes, youtube has also been encoding in 720p for awhile as well.

Well this is quite pleasing , but for me this kinda sucks ;D , i have an old desktop the GeForce 5500 FX ;DDD . So yeah and plus my motherboard is kinda shitty so . this is bad news for my PC ;D

I can barelly watch the 720p videos with all the bandwidth throtling they are doing in my country. It's like back in the old days when you opened a video and you had to wait a while to load it and then play it. Now with 1080p I can enjoy a snack too before I can whatch it.

How are they going to make money? They already make very little profit if any. This is only going to further put youtube in the red.

HD content is slow as dirt on my P4 and I have cable internet. 1080P will be unwatchable, I don't watch any HD as it is.

Don't stress over having an older PC, you'll still be able to watch the low res videos, but the option to view 1080p will be there.

i don't think high speed broadband is all that ubiquitous all over the world.
it takes a hell lot of time to download that video here in India!

Thanks for passing this on, Justin.

I'm barely managing the 720p ones. Laptop CPU + wireless = shitty performance. But they did say that Intel's 4th generation of graphics series will support acceleration (i have 4500m) so all i need now are the drivers.