Jun 25

iPhone 3GS Driving 400-Percent Growth in YouTube Uploads

Posted in: Apple, att, Phones, Today's Chili, video, YouTube

3660655685_e613800389Video uploads to YouTube have increased 400 percent a day since the launch of the iPhone 3GS, according to YouTube.

In a blog post, YouTube officials Dwipal Desai and Mia Quagliarello cited three factors driving an overall growth of 1700 percent in uploads in the last six months: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvement of the upload flow and a new, streamlined process to share videos on social networks.

Yowza — 400 percent a day due to the iPhone 3GS? We’re guessing AT&T is going to hate this: The company already prevented the TV streaming iPhone app SlingPlayer from working on the 3G network, saying it “could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network.” How will AT&T handle video uploads? That’s bound to stress the upstream of the 3G network. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Via Macworld


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Jun 21

Watch High-Resolution YouTube Videos

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, videos, Web Sites, YouTube


This article was written on February 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

The words YouTube and “high-resolution” have never really fit well in the same sentence. YouTube has always greatly limited the resolution of their videos to conserve on bandwidth, but going forward that may not always be the case. As it turns out there is a little something that you can add on to the end of a YouTube URL to have it play a high-resolution version of the same video.

The thing that you need to know, however, is that not every video has been re-encoded into the higher quality. In fact, I’ve tested this “trick” on about 40 videos, and only 7 of them had a higher quality version available. I’ve been reading around about this, and it looks as though newly uploaded videos are being converted a few hours after they’ve been added. And no one really seems to be sure as to whether it depends on the format of video (AVI, WMV, etc…).

I spent about 30 minutes trying to find a good video that has been converted to the higher resolution, and one that was also a good demonstration of why the higher quality matters. To really notice the difference I wanted to get something with a lot of motion, and I thought that there’s nothing better than the skateboarding dog made popular by the iPhone commercial!

Ready for the example? Just add &fmt=6 onto the end of any YouTube URL. Using the skateboarding dog as an example you would take the normal URL:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0

and add the &fmt=6 onto the end:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQzUsTFqtW0&fmt=6

If the YouTube video just sits there loading then that is a sign that the video has not been converted to the higher resolution yet. To really see the difference you should view the video in full screen mode by clicking the button in the bottom-right corner of the player.

Note: Alternatively you can add &fmt=18 and it will play the high-resolution version when available, otherwise it will play the regular version. Here’s a Greasemonkey script that will automatically add &fmt=18 onto the end of each YouTube URL.

I took a still image from part of the video so that you can really compare the differences side-by-side:

youtube high quality videos

I can’t wait for YouTube to start rolling this out to all of their videos, and hopefully they’ll add a button to their site where you can easily switch between the low and high quality versions on a per-video basis.

UPDATE: Since writing this article YouTube has incorporated a feature so that users can switch between videos of the different quality.

[via VideoHelp] Thanks to Yansky for the tip!

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Jun 17

Google says Filtering Videos is a Top Priority

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, YouTube


This article was written on February 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

GoogleyoutubeAfter dealing with numerous copyright issues, Google is taking a step to filter movies uploaded to YouTube. According to Mercury News, Google has taken on technology from Audible Magic that will be used to deal with unauthorized videos that appear all over YouTube. While this move protects Google from further copyright issues, it could very easily draw some of their massive crowd away.

Audible Magic may sound familiar because just recently, MySpace announced that they were taking measures to protect copyrighted videos. They began a program, licensing technology from AudibleMagic which can scan videos and look for signature vectors like a fingerprint to compare with vectors stored in a database. When matches are found, it means that the movie has a copyright, and the video would be blocked.

People like YouTube because it’s easily accessible to anyone who wants to contribute, and it’s free. Google has been feeling the pressure to do something for months now, but they’ve been slow to make a move. According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chief Executive, filtering technology is one of the highest priorities and they plan on rolling it out soon.

Viacom is doubtful of Google’s willingness to get the move on with this filtering technology. A spokesman from Viacom when speaking to The Mercury News says, “YouTube and Google have been promising filtering tools for many, many months, while the damage to copyright owners continues.”

How would this effect YouTube and their audience? Jesse Drew who is the director of the technocultural studies at University of California-Davis says, ‘YouTube is definitely going to lose popularity. These things become popular because they are underground and free and accessible.”

Whatever Google decides to do, someone is going to be unhappy.  On one hand they have companies like NBC Universal and News Corp who are giving Google pressure to take care of the problem.  On the other hand they have users who have gotten used to being able to post what they want, which leaves Google in an uncomfortable place to be.

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Jun 16

VuNow’s internet video-to-TV streamer finds a home in Sherwood receivers

Posted in: media streamer, MediaStreamer, streaming, Today's Chili, YouTube

The VuNow platform is sitting a lot prettier, as it has grabbed an OEM deal to be included in Sherwood’s upcoming line of receivers. Already making an appearance as the Netgear ITV2000 standalone unit, now high end amps and surround sound systems will have access to a variety of internet video sources without additional hardware. Verismo’s said it will be pursuing many different opportunities for its technology, we’ll wait and see where the YouTube / CNN / ESPN and more streaming hardware shows up next, though your cable box would appear to be a safe bet.

Continue reading VuNow’s internet video-to-TV streamer finds a home in Sherwood receivers

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VuNow’s internet video-to-TV streamer finds a home in Sherwood receivers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 14

Would You Pay to Watch YouTube?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, YouTube


This article was written on November 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

subscription fees IBM recently reported the results of a survey they conducted called “End of Advertising” to see how people felt about current methods of marketing and advertising. One interesting finding from the survey was this – 11% of the 2400 consumers surveyed said they would be willing to pay a nominal fee to view online video content free of ads. They also found that people value their Internet time just as much as, or if not more than their TV time, and want a quality experience. This helps explain why consumers would be willing to pay for a video service that’s currently offered for free.

Given that YouTube is king of video content on the web, would you pay a monthly fee to watch user-submitted videos ad-free? What about other sites on the web? We know that users will tolerate a certain amount of advertising and certain forms if they can get free content, but some would rather pay to have ads removed like the good old days where you paid for the services that you received. YouTube is a service, Gmail is a service, Yahoo Messenger is a service, yet they’re all free thanks to ads.

Between Read/Write Web and E-Consultancy, they crunched the numbers to see if offering a paid-subscription could potentially turn into a good business model in the future for sites like YouTube. If YouTube were to charge $2 per month for each user, and 10% of their 50 million users participated in the subscription service, YouTube would receive $137 million annually. Looking at it from the other side, if those same 10% of users generated money via the advertisements that YouTube currently uses, at most, they would make $38 million in annual revenue. The bottom line? YouTube could potentially increase their profits quite a bit if they started to offer a premium subscription plan.

So, would any of you be willing to pay an amount to some of your favorite sites and services if they’d remove the ads? What’s the most you’d be willing to pay per month?

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Jun 10

Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit gets its own specifications breakdown

Posted in: Today's Chili, YouTube

Generally speaking, we don’t much care about the nuts and bolts behind a thrill ride. If it thrills, it’s a winner; if not, it’s a failure. But the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit is a horse of a different color, and being that it’s described as the planet’s most technologically advanced coaster, we figured it prudent to pass along the details that only true nerds could appreciate. For starters, each rider will have access to a touchpad in order to select their own ride soundtrack from a 30 song library. There’s also a half dozen cameras in the ride vehicle alongside eight others along the track, all of which combine to assemble a take-home video of the experience if you’d like. Speaking of, check out the demo vid just past the break, and look for this to open to the public later this summer.

Gallery: Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit gets its own specifications breakdown

Continue reading Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit gets its own specifications breakdown

Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit gets its own specifications breakdown originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 03

YouTube rebrands TV web portal “YouTube XL”

Posted in: streaming, Today's Chili, YouTube

Whether you call it ten-foot or lean back like Hulu Desktop, putting a TV-ready front end on your website is all the rage nowadays, and after six months of beta, YouTube is relaunching its Wii and PlayStation 3-aimed site as YouTube XL. Now accessible by any browser at www.youtube.com/xl, it’s been stripped down to the basics (at the moment, that means no HD, or even HQ viewing option) to make YouTube work on the big screen, plus tweaks allowing control via Bluetooth remotes or some cellphones, like Android devices running Gmote. The HTPC crowd, those living without widgets and other direct access will surely find plenty to love, why not hit up the site right now to try it out?

[Via TechCrunch]

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YouTube rebrands TV web portal “YouTube XL” originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 01

LG’s HR400 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray recorder gets outed

Posted in: blu-ray, LG, Today's Chili, YouTube

So, why can’t Yanks get ahold of these Blu-ray recorders again? All pent-up rage aside, what we’re looking at above is LG’s yet-to-be-formally-announced HR400, a Blu-ray recorder that will evidently be aimed initially at the European market. Packing BD-Live (Profile 2.0) support, a built-in DVB-T TV tuner and YouTube compatibility, this deck also arrives with 160GB of internal hard drive space for holding OTA recordings. Heck, this thing can even play back DivX HD files, stream media clips from other places on your network and upscale DVDs to 1080p. Is all that worth €599 ($852)? We’re saying no, but you and your wallet can make your own darn decisions.

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LG’s HR400 Profile 2.0 Blu-ray recorder gets outed originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 18

Video of the Day: Frozen in Grand Central Station

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites, YouTube


This article was written on February 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

For you enjoyment, the YouTube Video of the day:

Now this is what you call a prank! And what a perfect place to pull such a prank in busy Grand Central Station in New York. Those who weren’t part of the act were obviously confused and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Whoever thought up this one, what an idea!

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May 13

Sony’s X-series OLED Walkman now priced in real American dollars, ships mid-June

Posted in: breaking news, BreakingNews, OLED, sony, Today's Chili, YouTube

Sony has yet to offer us official US pricing or availability on its eagerly awaited X-series of OLED Walkmans. As such, we have to grasp at whatever bits of desperate information we can as this 3-inch Walkman with built-in noise cancellation makes its way West following the Japanese launch. Amazon lists the little guy at $399.95 (32GB) and $299.95 (16GB) which just happens to be the same pricing as Apple’s iPod touch, for whatever that’s worth. It’s not in stock but you can pre-order now if dare.

Update: And just like that, it’s official. Sony’s 16GB NWZ- X1051 with 32GB NWZ- X1061 will be priced $299 and $399, respectively, when they go on sale nationwide Stateside in mid-June. As a surprise, they’ll also feature embedded apps for YouTube and Slacker Radio for all the free video and audio you can consume over WiFi.

[Via OLED-Info]

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Sony’s X-series OLED Walkman now priced in real American dollars, ships mid-June originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 May 2009 04:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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