DailyTech - Amid Profitability Concerns YouTube Bumps Its Offerings up to 1080p

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Internet Amid Profitability Concerns YouTube Bumps Its Offerings up to 1080p
Jason Mick (Blog) - November 16, 2009 10:10 AM

35 comment(s) - last by piroroadkill.. on Nov 17 at 6:00 AM

Service continues to aggressively pursue offering a wealth of content with Google's typical deliver first, profit later model

Concerns about YouTube's profitability still remain. As the Google-owned online video juggernaut explores ways of justifying its massive bandwidth expenses, it isn't being hesitant when it comes to adding to those expenses.

YouTube just announced that it will be bumping the maximum quality of its high definition videos to 1080p, up from the previous 720p. Writes YouTube software engineer Billy Biggs on the company's blog, "As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the Web to showcase your content."

In March YouTube began offering HD video for the first time. Much of its video is captured from mobile devices, such as camera phones, but even camera phones have now started becoming HD-capable. One example is Samsung's Instinct HD, available since September. Packing a 5 megapixel camera, the phone is capable of shooting and posting HD video.

With the bump to 1080p, YouTube says it will upgrade videos previously originally sent in 1080p that were automatically downconverted to 720p. For those who want it, 720p will remain an option, though.

For those with fast computers and large monitors, the bump to 1080p should provide a nice noticeable difference in picture quality. Now if YouTube can only find ways to become profitable, it would be truly on a roll.

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speed

By Drag0nFire on 11/16/2009 10:38:54 AM , Rating: 5

With my FIOS connection, some of the 720p videos don't load fast enough for streaming. I hesitate to think what the additional load of streaming 1080p will do to their upload speeds. =(

RE: speed

By invidious on 11/16/2009 10:49:02 AM , Rating: 5

I wouldn't blame your connection, YouTube's interface can't handle streaming the 720p videos they offer. Even while only watching the portion that has already cached up I get choppy video, it is only once the video has completed loading that it plays smoothly. I know its not my computer because I can stream 1080p using other players. DailyMotion for example does a far better job with HD. I don't know how YouTube can even consider offering 1080p until they fix their problems with 720p.

Maybe YouTube should think about offering some kind of application alternative that is better optimized to suit their system. Something simliar to Steam perhaps. If they are seriously trying to break into HD it would make a lot of sense.

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RE: speed

By Sunrise089 on 11/16/2009 10:58:19 AM , Rating: 5

Agree - Youtube's speed is laughably slow, and the problems are obviously on their side. I know they serve massive amounts of content, but in 2009 I'm barely willing to still use the site - videos that freeze up ever 15 seconds during busy times simply aren't acceptable from a top-20 website.

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RE: speed

By tastyratz on 11/16/2009 11:27:43 AM , Rating: 3

absolutely.
if it wasn't for their massive size I wouldn't visit them at all for their speed. Because they are so absurdly behind if a comparable competitor came around that truly offered similar content I would leave without even turning back... and I think that's the general consensus.
Keeping your viewers because you have them by the balls is an inferior business practice and leaves them open to competition from the next big thing. While dethroning youtube sounds like a massive feat, not long ago facebook seemed to have no chance at eclipsing myspace...

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RE: speed

By MrBlastman on 11/16/2009 11:30:16 AM , Rating: 3

You are all on to something. :) So let me get this straight, YouTube wants to increase profitability. They are also having problems serving up bandwith that is being requested at this time.

In order for them to increase their profitability, they are now going to begin serving up content requiring 125% more bandwidth... when they don't even have enough bandwidth to meet their needs right now. This will totally save them in costs...

Makes sense to me! Go YouTube management! You rock!

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RE: speed

By The0ne on 11/16/2009 11:33:47 AM , Rating: 2

Yep. My 10mbit on AT&T or even 15 can cache the video just fine but it's youtube that can't process them quick enough. I wouldn't be surprise if this is a just a PR (to start things off) so they are ahead of the competition.

In addition, we might see scaled-down versions of the 1080P like what netflix is doing with their HD video contents. This I wouldn't be surprise at all. Ultimately though, if this catches on, and it eventually will, cable companies are really going to have to offer more on their services; meaning stop the caps and such.

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RE: speed

By Reclaimer77 on 11/16/2009 12:16:05 PM , Rating: 5

Sounds like some of you live in large metro areas where you are suffering from peak hour hub saturation. I have never experienced these problems with YouTube HD that I'm reading on here. Yes, sometimes I get a video that seems to buffer really slow. But hitting refresh and reloading the video always fixes that.

Some of you really need to put things in perspective and show some appreciation. YouTube, for free, offers me more entertainment than any cable or satellite package I have ever had. Even if you have to pause a video for 5 minutes and let the buffer get a head start, so what !? Are we forgetting that a few years ago it would have taken hours to download HD video ? Now they are streaming it to our browsers for free, and all you guys can do is complain ?

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RE: speed

By Sunrise089 on 11/16/2009 12:39:50 PM , Rating: 2

I think you're a bit off here Reclaimer77.

Yes, I do live in a big Metro area, and I appreciate that you've not experienced these same issues. However I've tried refreshing, starting the video over, etc and nothing fixes the problem during busy times.

However you're wrong IMHO about perspective. I think accurate perspective is that connection speeds and content providers have increased many-fold over the last 5 years, and Youtube isn't nearly as unique as it once was. Youtube may offer more content than Cable/Satellite, but there has always been the trade off of lower quality and copyright restrictions on content, and now things are getting WORSE due to the speed issues. Try to think of other popular websites that have gotten substantially worse from a usability standpoint as the internet has evolved...

"Even if you have to pause a video for 5 minutes and let the buffer get a head start, so what !?" - So what is that it defeats the entire purpose of the site for me. I don't use Youtube to watch hour-long documentaries...I want to pull up a fast clip or highlight, and if I have to wait 5 minutes to show my guest the webclip I pulled up then I might as well not load it at all.

"Are we forgetting that a few years ago it would have taken hours to download HD video ? Now they are streaming it to our browsers for free, and all you guys can do is complain ?" - I complain because in 2006 I was watching TopGear episodes on Youtube in passable quality that looked similar to the SDTV I had at the time. 3 years later there are host of other options (Netflix streaming, Hulu, shows offering online content for free like South Park), and now Youtube looks much worse relative to my TV content courtesy of an upgrade to 1080p, and it's much slower than it used to be. To me I have plenty of reason to complain.

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RE: speed

By The0ne on 11/16/2009 1:26:01 PM , Rating: 2

Yea, you're getting the wrong idea here. We're not bashing Youtube lol. And yes, I've done my share of testing and on my end it appears to be Youtube. The whole video can be cache and the video will stall here and there. It doesn't happen all the time but it does happen often enough. Hulu does it as well although I don't use it much. Dailymotion is pretty good for me.

Chill...

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RE: speed

By omnicronx on 11/16/2009 2:21:17 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
We're not bashing Youtube lol.

So who are you bashing then? As even in this post, your finger seems squarely pointed at Youtube.

I just don't buy it that bandwidth is the issue for the vast majority of people. Its more than likely the fact pretty much any flash video you watch is being decoded in real time by the CPU alone. The GPU acceleration features in Flash9/10 are limited at best (luckily this should somewhat change soon), need to be enabled in the swf and have some pretty steep hardware requirements, so much so that most Youtube users can't make use of it (making it pretty much pointless). This leads me to believe that no Youtube videos have this feature turned on. (which at the moment makes sense)

A great example of this was back in the day before mpeg2 decoding was done on the GPU? (or even more recently before x264 decoding was done in software). Video would be choppy, and trying to do anything else on the PC at the same time was futile.

Now I am not saying this is the case for all situations, but when the video is completely cached, you can hardly blame youtube itself for your problems.

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RE: speed

By The0ne on 11/16/2009 2:59:45 PM , Rating: 2

There is no finger pointing, at least by me. I'm just also commenting that I have videos from youtube and other websites stall even when cache is full. I've done my testing I am weary of pointing a finger because even I cannot test all possible conditions, hence my statement.

Why are you and reclaimer trying to pick a fight when there's none to begin with. Do you know all there is to know about youtube and it's services, the cable companies rules and policies on bandwidth and what not, and what impact the load at various times in the day have on watching video? Trust me, you don't.

Get a clue, people can have a conversation without always resorting to pointless arguments or flame wars. People can share their views of their experience without putting blame on anyone. Not because they are afraid to but because they know they don't have all the answers to do so.

Again, chill...you have issues, I have issues, everyone has issues. It would be hell if everyone starts blaming others instead of talking about it and resolving them.

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RE: speed

By Reclaimer77 on 11/16/2009 3:52:33 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Why are you and reclaimer trying to pick a fight when there's none to begin with.

???

Excuse me ??

I stated opinions, offered a possible cause to some peoples problems that isn't YouTubes fault, and did it all without name calling, flaming, or even the slightest hint of hostility. Also god forbid I point out we're discussing something free of charge.

But picking a fight ? I would really like an apology from you, because that just isn't true.

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RE: speed

By The0ne on 11/16/2009 4:16:35 PM , Rating: 2

"So who are you bashing then? As even in this post, your finger seems squarely pointed at Youtube."

I'm not bashing anyone. I did however stated that it's youtube without clarification until my response to reclaimer. My bandwidth can run full throttle with no interruptions but yet with nothing going, except for youtube, videos it chokes from time to time. That is an indication that it's youtube that might be having issues. This happens with Hulu as well but DailyMotion seems to like me :)

If my Q6600@3.2GHz and 4870 can't decode these videos then I'm shocked. My 8400GS on the laptop however chokes at fullscreen though :D

"bashing" seems like a fighting word to me that's all. If not, then lets be done with this. You are correct though...

"Now I am not saying this is the case for all situations, but when the video is completely cached, you can hardly blame youtube itself for your problems."

I now download the most video locally to watch rather than watching/caching at the same time. There are stranges things that occur even when video is fully cache. Most annoying for me is the forwarding. Often times it chokes the video and I have to reload the whole page again. Either that or it refuses to start from the point and always skips back to the point where you've stopped it at. Why, I've no idea nor care to investigate.

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RE: speed

By omnicronx on 11/16/2009 4:18:27 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I'm just also commenting that I have videos from youtube and other websites stall even when cache is full.

And we both tried to give you an explanation as to why this could be happening.

quote:
Do you know all there is to know about youtube and it's services, the cable companies rules and policies on bandwidth and what not, and what impact the load at various times in the day have on watching video? Trust me, you don't.

I don't need to know these things, you already gave me all the variables I needed to know. If its on your PC already, you can pretty much discount everything but the Youtube player (its only cached on your PC, so you cannot blame the service, your ISP, throttling, strange gravitation forces etc), or flash .

I'm sorry that we used our brains to try and explain what you are seeing.

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RE: speed

By omnicronx on 11/16/2009 5:03:40 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
If its on your PC already

Assuming you have ruled out problems with your PC of course..

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RE: speed

By Reclaimer77 on 11/16/2009 4:45:16 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Yea, you're getting the wrong idea here. We're not bashing Youtube lol. And yes, I've done my share of testing and on my end it appears to be Youtube. The whole video can be cache and the video will stall here and there. It doesn't happen all the time but it does happen often enough. Hulu does it as well although I don't use it much. Dailymotion is pretty good for me.

If your "testing" is clicking on YouTube and then clicking on another video site and comparing their performance, that's far from conclusive. Your path to YouTube could be saturated while not being for another site.

You wouldn't happen to have done a traceroute to YouTube's streaming server would you ?

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RE: speed

By omnicronx on 11/16/2009 1:52:52 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Sounds like some of you live in large metro areas where you are suffering from peak hour hub saturation. I have never experienced these problems with YouTube HD that I'm reading on here.

Bingo, it seems everyone always forgets that Google and your local Internet backbone are most likely best of friends (either rented/leased, or special agreements with them) . Nobody and I mean nobody can match the service Google has on the mass scale Google has. Most likely the problems you are having have to do with your ISP then Google and Youtube. Now I am not saying there will not be blips here and there, we are talking about high bitrate HD video here, but to blame all your problems on Youtube, especially when it is a free service is childish.

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RE: speed

By sigmatau on 11/16/2009 7:55:30 PM , Rating: 2

I doubt they will be making the service any faster until they figure out how to make a profit.

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RE: speed

By BruceLeet on 11/16/2009 12:32:45 PM , Rating: 2

Oh that's weird.

I have no problem streaming 720p from Youtube and I've got a DSL line that tops out @ 600 kb/s. Usually a 5 minute 720p will finish loading by the time I'm half-way through the video at 2:30

Gotta be Verizon's network.

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RE: speed

By BruceLeet on 11/16/2009 12:40:29 PM , Rating: 1

http://i33.tinypic.com/kc01hf.jpg

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RE: speed

By BruceLeet on 11/16/2009 4:26:38 PM , Rating: 2

The one time proofs is posted on the internet it gets downrated.

Whats gonna happen if DT starts posting proofs of their stories, ROFL.

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RE: speed

By Drexial on 11/16/2009 3:40:49 PM , Rating: 3

I am actually going to go ahead and blame my problems with it on Firefox. I use the hell out of that browser. But occasionally when I have had it open for too long flash video takes a huge hit in playability. At the same time I can open Chrome and play the same video with Firefox still open and it plays just fine.

I believe its an issue with Firefox's optimizations for flash video. Other then play back I do have problems with the caching stalling half way through some videos. It will load half of it then just stop and never attempt to finish until I reload the page a few times. But then that doesn't always work.

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Bitrate Information

By Chris Peredun on 11/16/2009 10:35:29 AM , Rating: 3

From about halfway down the comments section on the linked blog, some bitrate information, courtesy of "Nintendo Maniac 64"

Video is AVC High Profile 4.0, VBR at 5Mbps (peaked at 9Mbps in sample video)
Audio is AAC4, VBR at 128Kbps (peaked at 149Kbps in sample video)

There's a lot of complaints there about the audio quality as well; apparently it's been downgraded to 128Kbps VBR from the 256Kbps VBR that was present in the 720p videos.

RE: Bitrate Information

By DarkElfa on 11/16/2009 10:59:16 AM , Rating: 3

Sweet, now we can get more Standard Def stuff uploaded as 1080p instead of 720p.

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RE: Bitrate Information

By Noya on 11/16/2009 11:58:50 AM , Rating: 3

No doubt. I always leave a snide comment when some douche uploads SD and labels it as HD.

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RE: Bitrate Information

By omnicronx on 11/16/2009 1:37:44 PM , Rating: 2

A better thing to know would be the comparison between 720p and 1080p. 1080p video is around 2.25 the size of 720 in terms pixel size (0.9MP vs 2.25MP), so unless youtube increased the bandwidth 2.25fold, quality could actually be degraded in many situations.(ex, anything fast motion)

This is most likely why they had to reduce the audio quality and why some people have been complaining about the video quality.

Really I don't see how this is going to save any money either. Are they really trying to claim that the majority of Youtube users really care about 1080p over 720p? Even worse, do they really expect more clicks as a result of the jump? All I see here is an added cost to a system that needs to cut them dramatically.

People go to youtube because it is a household name and has more content than any other site of its kind. While I am sure many users accepted 720p video and now 1080p video with open arms (myself included), these people are hardly the majority, and are most likely not the kind of person that is going to click on advertisements.

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bah

By legoman666 on 11/16/2009 10:36:16 AM , Rating: 2

I have 3mb DSL and on weekend nights I can't even stream the SD videos in real time, much less the 720p vids. 1080p will be even worse.

RE: bah

By barjebus on 11/16/2009 10:59:31 AM , Rating: 2

Well I use a 9600 baud modem and I can't even load this website!!! I think we need to stop using pictures and graphics on the net since I can't even load simple websites on weekend nights!

...

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RE: bah

By MrBlastman on 11/16/2009 11:26:03 AM , Rating: 2

Oh yeah? Well my 1200 bps acoustically coupled modem is jealous! ;(

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RE: bah

By TSS on 11/16/2009 1:15:58 PM , Rating: 2

Luxury.

I've got a few chinese teenages running messages back and forth and taping them to my screen. it takes them ages to draw up a video.

"An' you try an tell the yung people of today that....an they won't belive you..."

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Who cares?

By amanojaku on 11/16/2009 10:48:12 AM , Rating: 5

With content providers constantly pulling decent videos off the only things left are generally stupid. Obama Girl? Chocolate Rain? Soulja Boy? Some girl telling you how to apply press-on French nails? YouTube is the victim of its own accessibility and success.

/grumpy old man

Already taken effect

By Alpha4 on 11/17/2009 2:39:10 AM , Rating: 2

It appears Youtube has already converted all existing 1080p source videos, however to view them in 1080p you'll have to manually add &fmt=37 to the end of the youtube URL. I tested this by downloading a copy of one of my uploads to youtube. Without the &fmt=37 tag the file size weighs in at 60.4mb for 4 minutes & 8 seconds of footage. After adding the tag the file size is increased to 108mb.

Feel free to see test for yourself. ;)

original 720p: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmi4ETqlxlg
updated 1080p: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmi4ETqlxlg&fmt=37

The link also gives you an idea of how much Youtube's asstastic encoding reduces the quality. The source video I uploaded was encoded with minimal compression; 36mbit bitrate, Double-pass level 1 Quantizer and 60fps, originally 1.3gb in size.