YouTube now offers Full HD 1080p video

Google's video streaming portal now allows you to upload and download Full HD videos, that is, with a frame size of 1920 x 1080 pixels and 30 or 25 progressive frames per second. The only condition to be able to enjoy this audiovisual content is to have a good Internet connection speed and a sufficiently powerful computer.

Throughout its history, YouTube has been increasing the quality of its videos, and after implementing HD Ready quality (720), and with the expansion of Full HD home camcorders, the Google-owned video portal is now taking a new step by announcing Full HD support with a frame size of 1920 x 1080 pixels and 30 or 25 progressive frames per second. One of the obstacles that users will encounter will be the connection speed and processing speed of their computer, although the latter aspect could be overcome with the help of applications like Boxee.

And it is that the decoding of video flash at 1080p ‘strip’ much of CPU, even reaching 85% of the total yield in an Intel Core 2 duo. The arrival of Flash version 10.1, announced by Adobe for a few months, will mean the acceleration of the GPU so, even, in a netbook with a chip of low quality graphics, it could be reproduced without stops videos at 1080. The user must also have a 1080P configured monitor, since in the case of having it configured at 1024 × 768 pixe quality similar to 720p.

To date, the Full HD files that users uploaded were recoded to 720p, thus losing part of their quality. Now, YouTube intends to proceed to reload all the videos of the users who once uploaded them to 1080 so that they can be viewed in the original quality.

Cinema on YouTube?

This new step towards quality has once again triggered the idea in the market that the Google portal, apart from advertising, would be studying the possibility of launching an online pay-per-view service for movies.

As an example of the quality that Full HD 1080 can offer on YouTube, we invite you to watch the trailer for the movie Tron Legacy (Disney) and a production designed for IMAX.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtBbLSdj-G8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou6_MkIvKOo[/youtube]