Written by Jackson West
Posted Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 6:18 PM PT

New YouTube Player on horizon, Blip.tv Upgrades

YouTube is getting ready to release an update of its embeddable video player. It’s currently being tested, as users seem to be stumbling across embedded clips featuring the new player somewhat randomly over the past week. Google Operating System posted the screenshot below, and Google Blogoscoped has more screenshots.

New YouTube Player -- Google Operating System Screenshot

It seems that YouTube is getting the benefit of features from the Google Video player. For instance, you can now skip ahead even if a video is not fully loaded. Andy Plesser at Beet.tv suggests that you can also craft URLs that will jump to a particular time in a clip, but I haven’t been able to confirm that yet.

Another feature, a series of related clip thumbnails, was already built into Blip.tv’s show player and the SplashCast player. In the new YouTube player, the related clips are determined by YouTube, while users determine related clips for the Blip and Splashcast viewers.

Speaking of Blip, the company released an upgrade to its site and tools, including the long-awaited paid “Pro” accounts, an updated show player, more syndication options and back end improvements including the addition of nearly nine terabytes of video storage in less than two weeks.