jun 21
2007
Mobile YouTube
Everyone got excited yesterday because we learned that YouTube will be available on the iPhone. But everyone overlooked that YouTube also announced m.youtube.com, which is, ya know, the same thing for everyone else.
5 comments
If by "everyone else" you mean "everyone not chained to the slowest data network in the country" then, yeah. Have fun watching that skateboarding dog at 56k, iPhoners! (Why am I so angry about that?)
posted by Jim Ray at 1:23 AM on June 21, 2007 
Prior to today I had maybe been to YouTube less than five times in my life. After updating my AppleTV with the YouTube update I spent a good portion of my evening checking it out (The Robot Chicken Star Wars stuff is great, I want to buy it) and have to say my experience with it on my TV was much better than on my computer. As geeky as I am I still much prefer watching video on a television in the comfort of my couch or bed.
I believe the iPhone YouTube experience will be slightly different (not sure on this cuz I think mobile video of any kind is quite pointless so I tend not to pay too much attention) as it will be full-screen and of higher quality (h264), although since the quality of everything on YouTube essentially sucks anyway I'm not sure if that will matter.
posted by Phil J Leitch at 7:34 AM on June 21, 2007
Hmm, I was hoping this meant that the newly re-converted hi-res H.264 versions of the videos are now available for everyone else (just like for the iPhone and Apple TV). These are mobile-specific 3GP format, though. I'm really looking forward to having the "same thing" for everyone else ... someday.
posted by Dave at 1:14 PM on June 21, 2007
My bad, I kind of repeated half of what Phil said. Although I'm pretty sure that the H.264 re-conversion uses the originally uploaded user videos as the source, many of which (especially ones recorded on camera phones and still cameras) will admittedly be crappy quality and won't benefit from H.264 at all, but many (I'm thinking ripped TV shows and music videos) might very well be much higher quality than that.
posted by Dave at 1:24 PM on June 21, 2007
Anyone know what server-side batch process software Youtube uses for conversion?
posted by taulpaul at 2:19 PM on June 21, 2007
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