YouTube Releases the Google Video Quality Report 66
mpicpp (3454017) writes "YouTube has released a tool that can show you how your video-streaming quality compares to your neighbor's. 'The Google Video Quality Report is available to people in the U.S. and Canada, where it launched in January. It compares your streaming video quality to three standards: HD Verified, when your provider can deliver HD video consistently at a resolution of at least 720p without buffering or interruptions; Standard Definition, for consistent video streaming at 360p; and Lower Definition, for videos that regularly play at less than 360p or often are interrupted."
Re:Weak article, weaker report (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get too excited - the data is garbage. My 25/10mbps connection wouldn't stream over 320p despite my ISP hosting a cache. I installed the Youtube HighDef addon and sure enough I can stream 1080p easily. Reports on dslr show that they've got serious issues with their cache servers in specific areas and if you bypass them (ie: block their IPs) you'll get better streaming results from other areas further away which further skews the data.
Also smacks of Google strong arming people (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason is the categories, specifically the "YouTube(tm) HD Verified" one. Sounds like "Do what we like to get official cred or else."
Also seems to be what is happening in my area. We are on their results list. However Comcast Xfinity is the only "HD Verified" ISP. Cox is listed as SD...
But then you look at the results and you see that Cox's graph looks basically the same as Comcasts in terms of HD/SD video plays. Also my informal surveys of people seem to support that Cox does a better job around here. I find way more people who hate Comcast than Cox.
And of course it highly depends on package. Cox has everything from a "ultimate suck cheapy" service which maxes out at 5mbps, and thus might have poor streaming, up to a 150mbps service that I have for which Youtube streams are less than 10% of available bandwidth. Anywhere you can get their service in town you can get those two or anything in between so people's experience can vary greatly.
Heck even Century Link, which is fairly crap service as phone companies often are, has many more HD than SD views and still qualifies as an "SD" provider.
So something smells fishy. Unless there's clearer definitions as to what it means to be "HD Verified" I'm wondering if this isn't more of a "pay us and/or do what we want to get verified" kind of thing. Otherwise, what's the deal? Like at this time period, they claim Comcast has 93% HD streams and Cox has 90%. Shit that is easy within a margin of error accounting for differences in speeds of connections, computers, and even choice of video (I watch a number of videos that don't have HD). Yet somehow that 3% is enough for a difference in classification?
I'm all for better streaming video, but I am a little suspicious about this.