YouTube to support Full HD 1080p video

 

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Posted on 13 Nov 2009 at 12:22

Google has announced that from next week, HD videos on YouTube will be available in 1080p format as well as the current maximum of 720p. Videos already uploaded in 1080p format will be re-encoded at the higher resolution.

"As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content," the company stated in a blog post.

YouTube will highlight 1080p videos on the homepage to promote the change and encourage users to record in the higher resolution.

Google hasn't yet revealed whether the bitrate or audio quality will increase to match the increase in resolution. If the resolution is increased but the bitrate kept the same, the video could in fact look worse in 1080p. If the bitrate increases, it then depends how much it increases by before we can determine how much better the video quality actually is. As for sound quality, YouTube's current maximum sampling rate is 44kHz, which is equivalent to CD audio, and some users have complained that it should be 48kHz or higher.

The increase in resolution follows the trend in consumer electronics to support higher resolutions. With the advent of Blu-ray, 1080p support has become mainstream for TVs and computer monitors. In addition, HD camcorders are also getting cheaper and more popular, such as the new Full HD mini-camcorders launched by Sony and Samsung.

The only bottleneck that remains is broadband speed. Although a 1080p video should theoretically contain twice as much data as a 720p video, with compression the ratio is likely to be much less than that. However, those who currently have problems watching an entire HD video on YouTube will most likely find performance even slower with Full HD videos.

The UK is 41st in the world in terms of download speeds, with an average of 5.27Mb/s, and 60th for upload speeds with an average of 0.7 Mb/s.

Author: Barry de la Rosa