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| 7:16pm EDT, Thu Sep 2 |
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YouTube Ups Its TV Ante
By:
The Online Reporter
Publish Date: June 05, 2009
Complete articles are posted three weeks after they have been sent to subscribers. To request a copy of the current edition, e-mail paperboy@riderresearch.com .
| - Starting with PC, Wii, PS3
- Premium Content Coming At Some Point
The largest video library and service on the Web just went up one
size, to the TV set.
In January, YouTube released a beta of its YouTube for Television
service for Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PS3, and the service has just
been officially released under the name YouTube XL.
The second go-round shows a service with the same impressive feel and
a few tweaks that make it run smoother and enhance the user
experience.
It still lacks premium content, but YouTube has said that at least
some is coming, the question is when.
The service has been updated with a lot of the fixes the beta needed
and some nice additions. The best thing is a progress bar for videos
and the ability to move forward or backward in the video by clicking
the bar.
Another improvement is the ability to look at a video’s information
while it’s playing on the Wii or PS3 and not cause any choppiness or
video pixilation.
YouTube kept its continuous-play option, which works great for the TV
viewing experience. Users no longer need to continually click when a
video is done, as the next piece of content in search results plays
automatically. The feature works well for searches for a genre of
video or music videos from an artist, but specific searches mean the
user will be watching a couple of versions of the same content in a
row.
The YouTube XL display on a PC
That being said, searching for “music videos” or for a specific genre
of music seems to turn YouTube into one of the best music TV
“channels” in the US.
All of these controls work with the Wii and PS3 controllers, but
YouTube has also added remote support for some Bluetooth-enabled
remotes and Android mobile phones.
YouTube has also said that it wants to expand the new service to
every TV-connected device — think TiVo, VUDU, Roku and maybe even
Apple TV — which is a very big deal. The current offering on these
platforms works alright for the TV screen but never felt optimized.
A YouTube version that supports HD content and can be streamed from
all of these platforms is a huge step forward. One that gets even the
slightest bit of professionally created TV or movie content will end
up owning the market.
For our original coverage, see “YouTube Aims to Be TV Juggernaut” at:
http://onlinereporter.com/article.php?article_id=14576
The Browser is King
The new YouTube XL is optimized for watching videos on any large
screen, even the PC, but its home still is the TV set with the help
of a computer, Wii or PS3.
YouTube has been slowly adding HD content to its service and now a
fair chunk of it is available from the couch. Unfortunately, there’s
still not much professional-quality content on the service other than
music videos. A lot of the HD content being touted is clips or user-
generated videos.
YouTube has also said it is no longer working with TV makers directly
because each set was requiring a unique version of YouTube, some on
the screen and content delivery end and others on the Flash variant
end — this could change if Adobe gets its Flash on as many TV sets as
it wants to.
Google was willing to make a non-Flash version of YouTube for Apple’s
Apple TV and iPhone, but that seems to be the limit of YouTube’s
flexibility toward others’ demands.
“I want to remind you guys that this works in all modern browsers,
even IE,” Kuan Yong, product manager for YouTube platforms, told
reporters. “This is all happening in the browser.”
YouTube XL has kept the social features away for now, because the
service is more about watching a video. “It’s not really a social
experience,” said Yong. “Maybe it’s just you and the couch and a pint
of ice cream.”
Looking Back, Looking Forward
YouTube’s journey to the boob tube began in the first half of 2007
through a deal with Apple TV. After Apple’s start, Sony, HP,
Panasonic, TiVo and Verismo also jumped on the bandwagon with the
addition of new APIs in March 2008. These APIs are part of the
company’s “on any screen, anytime” motto. YouTube has also made its
way to mobiles, with the iPhone even getting a special version of the
site, making that “any screen” part a bigger deal. What’s left to see
is if anyone will watch.
YouTube has made some very big content deals of late with the
addition of TV and movie sections to its main site – deals with
content owners like Sony Pictures, CBS, MGM, Starz, Lionsgate and BBC
Worldwide.
While this content tends to be a little bit older, it is still
proving to be popular. Within the first week of its release, some TV
shows were already hitting more than 100,000 views.
Premium content won’t be coming to YouTube XL, but the company did
say that some of its smaller content providers “are very excited
about the new distribution” and that they want to be on the TV as
soon as possible.
YouTube XL doesn’t have any advertising just yet, which means it
won’t be getting much professional content just yet. If YouTube can
bring the quality offered from this version to other systems, like
TiVO’s and VUDU’s boxes, it could easily start generating some high
viewership numbers.
Advertising for and distributing the service will help increase
viewership, more eyeballs mean better numbers with which to approach
advertisers and content owners, and eventually this will make its way
back to the user in the form of premium content.
YouTube has been willing in the past to allow others to sell their
own ads in exchange for their content and doing so on this screen
probably isn’t any different.
Services like these are in demand. The first network or film studio
that really jumps on board and finds a way to move to the TV through
the Net — and make some money off of the deal — will change the
industry.
Offerings like YouTube XL make that more of a question of when, not
if. |
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