14 DAY TRIAL // Last week's announcement that YouTube will be bringing in three months' time higher quality videos had everybody going crazy over HD quality content available from Google's video sharing site. The exact statement of Steve Chen said nothing of it, really, and that puzzles me right now.
It would have definitely been something to brag about and start a rain dance with the drums and all the rest of the media flashing around it, but it's been surprisingly quiet. No confirming and no denying it ever since. It seems others have been thinking about this as well, but without any information it's hard to make something of it.
According to Duncan Riley of TechCrunch, Liz Gannes over at NeeTeeVee (that's where the announcement was made, at the NeeTeeVee Live conference last week) "contends that high quality doesn't mean HD, and argues that the context of the quote is YouTube simply providing a higher quality video than they are currently doing. Gannes noted that 480p and lower can be "high quality", but not high definition, and yet I can't help than wonder; isn't high quality in a HD age really high quality, quality at the top of the spectrum of choices? Is marketing a service as "high quality" when it's not HD somewhat misleading to customers when they would naturally link to two?"
What would be the point of YouTube offering poorer quality services when everybody else in that particular field is racing for the HD quality? It's obvious that's where everything is going, the only momentary impediment (and I emphasize momentary) is the bandwidth that still limits accessibility but that's not going to be here forever as an excuse to not go and provide like the leader of the market that it is. As I said, nothing's for certain, but it looks like not such a good long term strategy to deny HD quality when everything evolves around it.