Binary Impact
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24th
NOV
YouTube Goes Widescreen
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under ZOMG
YouTube has apparently changed all videos on its site to play in widescreen format. Because most videos on the site were originally uploaded in a ratio closer to 4:3 (the standard size used on non-HD televisions), most videos are playing with horizontal black bars on the side. Some videos (like this one) are taking advantage of the full space, but are shrunk down to the normal size when they’re embedded elsewhere.
It seems that YouTube is either doing A/B testing or that the changes haven’t propagated to all servers (if that’s even possible) – hard refreshing on videos seems to alternate between the standard video player and the widescreen one. But it’s a widespread change, as hundreds of tweets are pouring in in about the switch to widescreen.
Widescreen YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is activated by default. The change may be related to YouTube’s recent announcement of full-length films from MGM, which pits it directly against Hulu.
YouTube is by no means the first video site to go widescreen – Blip.tv (our favorite YouTube alternative) has long had the feature. And as the comments point out, sites like Vimeo and SmugMug already offer video in HD.
18th
NOV
See What Your Neighbors Have Uploaded to YouTube
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under ZOMG
The YouTube development team has released a geolocation webapp that integrates Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Gears’ geolocation features to see where YouTube videos were uploaded. The idea is great in theory, but Google Gears seems to be a little off in terms of locating you (I’m sure it will be fixed soon if not already). In any event it looks interesting.