Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 at 1:00 AM PT

 

What Steve Said: “HD” vs. “High Quality”

At NewTeeVee Live last week, Om and I asked YouTube co-founder and CTO Steve Chen whether or not YouTube had plans to improve its video quality. There’s been some confusion and finger-pointing over Chen’s reply, so I just want to quickly clear up what happened.

Chen said that he looks at the video experience from a viewers’ perspective, and that users are more upset by long waits for buffering than poor quality videos. He said requests for higher-quality videos have come more from the content creator side. (This was exemplified when, right about this time in the interview, an audience member — I believe it was Galacticast creator and star Casey McKinnon — heckled “HD! HD!” from the audience.)

Chen said his mantra is “good enough” — and, to be certain, that’s taken YouTube very far. He explained that his preference would be to increase access around the world, so that everyone, everywhere, on any device can watch YouTube videos. On that note, Chen said he would also love everyone, everywhere, on any device to be able to upload videos as well. As NTV writer Chris Albrecht wrote of Chen’s remarks at the time, “ disregarded HD, it’s more about getting people all over the world being able to watch it.” As Chen readily admitted, it doesn’t make much sense to put an HD gloss on the short, casual, personal videos that make up much of YouTube’s library.

While he fell firmly on the side of accessibility over quality, Chen did say YouTube is rolling out experiments to check viewers’ broadband capacities and improve improve video streaming quality if there’s enough bandwidth. Rafe Needleman from CNET’s Webware followed up with Chen in the hallway, and was told such improvements would be moved out of testing and rolled out to all YouTube users within three months.

Needleman didn’t use the term “HD” in his story, but many people, most prominently TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley — who did not attend the conference — used that term to describe Chen’s remarks. I had trouble getting ahold of Riley to correct his story, but he did so tonight, saying the confusion was due to his interpretation of “high quality” as a synonym for “high definition.”

To be fair, this is a new area, and the terms are just being defined, but when companies in our space like Akamai and Vimeo label their products “HD” they are talking about something very specific: showing online video at the standard HDTV resolutions of 720p and 1080i. And that is neither the spirit nor the letter of what Chen said.

Unfortunately, I don’t have video of the Steve Chen interview to post here — while our live-streaming provider Mogulus is great, it is a small startup and has not been able to get us the sessions on demand just yet.

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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] Liz has a post up on this now here. YouTube Loading information about [...]

    High Quality Without HD: A Fair Marketing Ploy In A HD Age? on November 19th, 2007 at 1:21 am - Permalink

  2. Most webcams can’t capture HD quality anyway. ;)

    Frank Sinton on November 19th, 2007 at 6:15 pm - Permalink

  3. Did anyone ask him about DivX’s Stage6 site? It seems to stream faster than YouTube with a higher-quality picture. I wonder why people don’t flock to it…

    Chris Lynn on November 19th, 2007 at 11:26 pm - Permalink

  4. [...] to our questions about video quality by saying that YouTube will boost quality of the videos, but not at the expense of user experience. Buffering and video playback delays were an anathema to the popular destination site, and YouTube [...]

    Does HD On A PC Screen Matter? « GigaOM on November 20th, 2007 at 8:07 am - Permalink

  5. [...] to our questions about video quality by saying that YouTube will boost the quality of the videos, but not at the expense of user experience. Buffering and video playback delays were an anathema to the popular destination site, and YouTube [...]

    Does HD On a PC Screen Matter? - META Blog - on November 20th, 2007 at 11:37 pm - Permalink

  6. HD! HD! (I’m not only a content creator, but I’m a viewer too… And I’m still hoping they’ll improve the viewing experience).

    Casey on November 27th, 2007 at 11:29 am - Permalink

  7. [...] What Steve Said: “HD” vs. “High Quality” At NewTeeVee Live last week, Om and I asked YouTube co-founder and CTO Steve Chen whether or not YouTube had plans to […] [...]

    The return of “Top English WP Blogs” « conduong.co.cc on December 17th, 2007 at 10:34 pm - Permalink

  8. [...] kaavailtiin myös muita jakeluteitä videoille, ovathan ne nyt saatavilla jo [...]

    Viimeisellä Rannalla » Tubella leikkaa on February 14th, 2008 at 10:33 pm - Permalink

  9. [...] Chen told us at NewTeeVee Live last year that YouTube would experiment with different quality streams, depending on the user’s bandwidth. Perhaps this is the new “good enough” for [...]

    YouTube’s Bumps Up Streaming Quality « NewTeeVee on March 12th, 2008 at 8:07 am - Permalink

  10. That’s great that YouTube has improved the quality, but you need to consider few things before encoding for higher quality.

    Youtube Hi Def
    http://www.squidoo.com/youtubehd

    cineteq on March 24th, 2008 at 4:01 am - Permalink

  11. [...] 4:3). Seems like the site is upgrading from its accessibility-trumps-quality mantra (and no doubt hearing the drumbeat of demand for high-definition [...]

    YouTube Goes Widescreen « NewTeeVee on November 24th, 2008 at 9:54 pm - Permalink

  12. [...] meets the minimum 720p/1080i HD standard, and you can read more about that whole controversy here if that’s your sort of thing, but there’s no doubt that YouTube “HD” [...]

    Youtube Goes HD « Daily News2Read 2.0 on December 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm - Permalink

  13. [...] si la norme minimale 720p/1080i HD était respectée, et vous pouvez lire toute la controverse ici si c’est votre tasse de thé. Mais il n’y a aucun doute sur le fait que le contenu [...]

    YouTube devient “HD” - Gizmodo - Tant d'amour pour ces fabuleux nouveaux gadgets, c'est surnaturel. on December 6th, 2008 at 2:13 am - Permalink

  14. [...] o no lo standard minimo dell’HD di 720p/1080i, e potete leggere l’intera controversia a questo indirizzo, se vi interessa approfondire la questione. Ma non c’è alcun dubbio che i contenuti di [...]

    YouTube diventa HD (più o meno) - Gizmodo IT - Il gadget weblog on December 6th, 2008 at 4:10 am - Permalink

  15. [...] estarão realmente dentro de padrões da Alta Definição (720p/1080i), que caso lhe interesse pode ler mais aqui, não há dúvida, que o conteúdo em AD tem uma qualidade de imagem extremamente superior, sendo [...]

    YouTube Finalmente em Alta Definição (720p) « Casa Tuga on December 6th, 2008 at 1:03 pm - Permalink

  16. [...] talk about going HD has been going on just about forever with YouTube and there were even some workarounds possible. Now users don’t have to add or do [...]

    YouTube Goes HD Gains Viewers But Loses in Market | Driven To Nvizion Life on December 10th, 2008 at 6:43 am - Permalink

  17. [...] ser HD, o vídeo em si parece não ser HD ao pé da letra. Ele é consideravelmente melhor do que o High-Quality, mas não é [...]

    Conteúdo HD no YouTube | bernabauer.com on December 11th, 2008 at 3:33 am - Permalink

  18. [...] estarão realmente dentro de padrões da Alta Definição (720p/1080i), que caso lhe interesse pode ler mais aqui, não há dúvida, que o conteúdo em AD tem uma qualidade de imagem extremamente superior, sendo [...]

    YouTube Finalmente em Alta Definição (720p) « Azougado’s Weblog on January 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 am - Permalink

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