YouTube Adds Full-Length Television Shows 197
thefickler writes "YouTube has moved to put full-length television shows on its site for the first time. Historically, YouTube has hosted a bewildering and attractive variety of video clips, the vast majority of which have been under ten minutes in length. YouTube has announced that it had finalized a deal with CBS to offer shows such as Star Trek, MacGyver, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Young and the Restless. I can't wait to watch The Young and the Restless!"
Re:As a non-american... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a non-american... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes.
Re:As a non-american... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a non-american... (Score:4, Informative)
The videos are still encoded to 480x360 at the most. That's hardly "better than TV".
-uso.
Re:As a non-american... (Score:5, Informative)
Hate replying to my myself, but went to find one of these full-length Trek episodes, clicked on it: "This video is not available in your country". So much for that.
Re:Still using Flash (Score:5, Informative)
I don't disagree that I would like to see that happen, but think about it from the perspective from someone who works at GooTube and wants to keep that job: would it really make sense to switch to a brand-new standard only supported by [let's be generous] 25% of the market?
Ok, you may respond, why not maintain two parallel versions of the site: one for legacy users and one for browsers that support the new standards? And to that I say, it's a little bit hard to go to management and ask for the resources and time to implement a second parallel version of a service that already works splendidly well.
I would be just as happy as you if YouTube started offering video streams in other formats and other access methods. Until they do, though, I'll continue watching their FLV streams directly with VLC. The newly-released 0.9.2 even has a Lua scriptlet specifically designed to allow you to drop a YouTube URL directly into the playlist.
Not good, but good enough. At least you don't need Flash.
Re:Still using Flash (Score:4, Informative)
MPEG-4 contains patented technologies that require licensing in countries that acknowledge software patents. Patents covering MPEG-4 are claimed by over two dozen companies. The MPEG Licensing Authority[1] licenses patents required for MPEG-4 Part 2 Visual from a wide range of companies (audio is licensed separately) and lists all of its licensors and licensees on the site. New licenses for MPEG-4 System patents are under development[2] and no new licenses are being offered while holders of its old MPEG-4 Systems license are still covered under the terms of that license for the patents listed (MPEG LA â" Patent List). AT&T is trying to sue companies such as Apple Inc. over alleged MPEG-4 patent infringement.[3] The terms of Apple's Quicktime 7 license for users[4] describes in paragraph 14 the terms under Apple's existing MPEG-4 System Patent Portfolio license from MPEGLA.[1] [wikipedia.org]
No, it's not.
Re:Still using Flash (Score:5, Informative)
No, but Theora and Dirac are. Theora [theora.org] is from the Xiph open source community (the same people that do cdparanoia, FLAC, Speex, and Vorbis). The FSF has recommended its use along with Vorbis audio for some time now. Dirac [diracvideo.org] is from the BBC.
Re:As a non-american... (Score:1, Informative)
That's a user-uploaded video, not studio supplied data. Just pointing it out, may not mean anything, but Youtube may encode those videos differently given the guarantee of a much higher quality source.
It's simple logistics, the the video encoding they are currently doing ensures there is little/if any upscaling of user-uploaded videos that are for whatever ungodly reason in an unusual resolution.
US-ONLY! :( (Score:5, Informative)
So, this means I won't have to pirate the videos to watch my favorite shows?
Think again.
"This video is not available in your country."
Oh well, at least I know a site [thepiratebay.org] that DOES let me play the videos in my country - and without ads.
Re:As a non-american... (Score:3, Informative)
Have you actually tried them? Outside the US?
I doubt that.
You see, I know most of them. They do not work.
Just go on hulu.com and try watching a video. You can't.
That was the point of having a proxy in this discussion. Point lost.
"YOU'RE WINNER ! [wikipedia.org]"