YouTube may be the Web’s biggest video site, but YouTube’s videos have never been the Web’s biggest. In resolution, that is–in fact, the YouTube player has been looking increasingly cramped and retro compared to its roomy rivals at sites such as Hulu.

As of today, though, YouTube has increased the size of its player to 640 pixels wide–which is, coincidentally enough, the same width as Hulu’s player. The new player is in widescreen 16:9 format, but most content up on YouTube is old-school 4:3, so you usually get black bars. The extra real estate is still nice, though. Examples after the jump.

(I don’t know why the legendary Skateboarding Dog takes up so little of the new player–especially since he’s also available in a High Quality version that still isn’t as big as it could be:

When video is designed for 16:9 high-res, it looks really nice:

All of this reminds me of the situation with my HDTV–it too is designed for content of higher quality, in a different aspect ratio, than most of what’s actually out there. But 16:9 is becoming the default for new video, and I’ll bet the new YouTube player helps make it utterly pervasive even quicker.

 
3 Comments


Read more: Video, YouTube