Guardian
YouTube is introduce support for 1080p high-definition (HD) video from next week, allowing film shot in HD quality to be uploaded and viewed on the site.
The official YouTube blog explains that the new maximum – which doubles the number of lines on a video from the present maximum of 720p – is being introduced as consumer cameras have become better and better, with more HD quality.
Existing videos that have been uploaded in 1080p, which presently only appear in 720p quality, are being re-encoded for the higher-quality version, says Billy Biggs, a software engineer at the Google-owned video company.
An accompanying video shows the difference (included at a smaller size below) between the different qualities – though it is slow to load because 1080p video requires substantially more storage than lower-quality formats.
The introduction of more high-quality video will increase the friction between Google, and particularly YouTube, and various internet service providers in the US More…