LOS ANGELES — Here at Digital Hollywood yesterday, HP announced that YouTube clips would be made available on the soon-to-be-released MediaSmart Connect digital media receiver.
The box acts as a connection between multiple PC’s and Macs around the house to television sets. HP is squarely taking on Apple TV with the new device which will be shipped in June. The retail price is not available.
Yesterday at the show, I interviewed Carlos Montalvo, vice president of marketing and services, Connected Entertainment Business, HP.
Similar to clips on the iPhone, this is not the full YouTube offering, but specially curated channels by YouTube for the new service. The channels offered through the box will be high quality, encoded in H.264, not HD in the true sense, but the files will look good enough to blow-up on the big screen.
If you haven’t noticed, the quality of YouTube clips is getting better as the transition to encoding via H.264 is pervading more of the content. Our Beet.TV channel on YouTube is looking very good.
If you want your videos to look better on YouTube, work on your encoding and you can upload giant files as big as 1 GB. If anyone wants to share their advice on the best encoding, file format and bit rates for YouTube, please comment below.
— Andy Plesser
