Posted 11/12/09 at 08:43:53 PM by Ryan Whitwam

In recent years, 1080p camcorders have found their way into more consumers’ hands. Now YouTube will allow people to take advantage of all those pixels. Starting next week, the HD options on the popular video sharing site will include both 720p and 1080p, provided the original source allows it.

There is a test video already up here. Performance seems to be good, but it doesn’t look tremendously different from current YouTube HD offerings. If you have an HD camera, YouTube would like you upload some 1080p video. They will be highlighting some of the best footage on the front page soon.  If you shoot HD video, will you take the extra time to upload your videos in 1080p?

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Posted 09/19/09 at 05:56:13 PM by Justin Kerr

In the small form factor graphics market, Nvidia’s Ion has been stealing the headlines lately, but it turns out VIA might be gearing up to give them a run for their money. Built on a new standard known as “Pico-ITXe”, the company has released their EPIA-P710, which claims to be capable of full 1080p video playback using nothing more than passive cooling. Of course we were skeptical at first, but they have finally backed up their claims by posting a short clip on YouTube showing the board in action.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this new part is how full featured it is given the size. It sports 3 USB 2.0 ports, has both SATA and IDE, as well as Gigabit Ethernet support. As you might expect, the current build is pared up with a VIA C7 1.0 GHz processor, but apparently this is still more than enough to handle anything the VX855 Media System Processor can’t handle video wise.

Hit the jump to view the demo video.

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Posted 10/07/08 at 04:25:30 PM by Andy Salisbury

Yesterday Google unveiled YouTube’s brand new theater view and dimming function, both dead ringers for the prospect of HD video. With the new theater view, users will be able to watch videos in a widened, dimmed format that will make whatever video they’re watching the main focus of the screen, much like Hulu’s “lower lights” feature.

Theater view provides a nice break from YouTube’s plethora of ads and “what you should watch” next suggestion boxes, all without making the video fit the screen and turn what was a watchable video into a pixilated mass.

The theater view provided by YouTube currently fills the extra space on the sides of the video with red curtains. Given the HD prospect of the theater view, there’s a good chance that this will be used to make room for 16:9 videos. And if that’s not enough for you, last week YouTube’s upload limit was changed to 1GB, convinced?

Now, we just need Tay Zonday to make a HD version of Chocolate Rain, and this will really catch on. 

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