This is a sign of slipping standards. Why isn't high quality the default?
Why doesn't YouTube allow for arbitrary size video hosting? It seems like it would be an excellent business. It could be modeled on a pay-as-you-use system like Amazon Web Services.
Take, for example, a typical screencast. Not only do I want h264 encoding, but I'd like the video to be around 1200x800. That is so much higher resolution than YouTube can offer right now.
High Quality isn't the default because if overnight YouTube made the switch their servers would be hammered and most likely go down the following day at multiple times.
Google's probably going to gradually add the feature, until they feel they have enough server power on YouTube to handle the traffic.
Why doesn't YouTube allow for arbitrary size video hosting? It seems like it would be an excellent business. It could be modeled on a pay-as-you-use system like Amazon Web Services.
Take, for example, a typical screencast. Not only do I want h264 encoding, but I'd like the video to be around 1200x800. That is so much higher resolution than YouTube can offer right now.