Google has just launched the Indian version of Youtube, which is good news for Indians not only in India but worldwide. Viewing videos online is fast catching up here in India with the growing penetration of Broadband. By offering localized content on Youtube Google has taken one more step to dominate the yet untapped internet video market in India.
Youtube India features all the content from the global Youtube as well, but the difference between the two begins in popularity charts etc.. The top video charts on Youtube India will reflect what Indians are watching now, the featured videos are programmed to cater to an Indian audience, and Google has also signed up local partners to distribute their content through YouTube.
Check out this funny YouTube India promotional video:
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Speaking at the NewTeeVee Live conference Youtube Co-founder Steve Chen said that Youtube will at some time in future stream high quality videos. Although YouTube’s goal, he said, is to make the site’s vast library of content available to everyone, and that requires a fairly low-bitrate stream, the service is testing a player that detects the speed of the viewer’s Net connection and serves up higher-quality video if they want it.
Steve Chen said that the high-quality streams will be available in the next months, but only for some of the videos. This is probably the reason why YouTube’s bulk uploader increased the size limit for a video from 100 MB to 1 GB.
YouTube probably has the lowest quality videos on the Web today thanks to the Flash 7 Technology. According to Wikipedia,
“YouTube’s video playback technology is based on Macromedia’s Flash Player 7 and uses the Sorenson Spark H.263 video codec. (…) [The video] has pixel dimensions of 320 by 240 and runs at 25 frames per second. The maximum data rate is 300kbit/s.”
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