The “Break it Down” Blog

YouTube Turns on HD – And it Looks Fantastic!

Well YouTube has finally done it – they’ve turned on HD for select movies uploaded in a high enough format to support it. You guys probably noticed the new widescreen player rollout a few weeks ago, it looks like that was Part 1 of the transition. Part 2 was to actually enable a “watch in HD” [...]

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Barack Obama Opens up Governmental Proceedings Using YouTube

In a move that I can only describe as “This is why I voted for Obama”, President-elect Barack Obama has announced that the weekly Democratic address will not just be recorded on radio (what’s that?) but also on video that will be posted to YouTube and cross-posted to Change.gov along with weekly presidential updates. In addition [...]

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Web 2.0: Content Delivery Monopolies for All! (Google, Amazon, Apple)

It was announced yesterday that YouTube (Google) is partnering with both Amazon and Apple to begin selling video games and music respectively. The idea is that content on YouTube identified as belonging to a certain video game or song would be associated with what amounts to a “Buy it Now” button that would take you over [...]

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Top Spin 3 Review (PS3)

Summary [7.5 out of 10] Top Spin 3 offers a deep tennis experience for players willing to learn the more complex control mechanisms while casual players can mostly still enjoy a quick game of tennis. A limited soundtrack, average graphics/environments and a limited licensed roster keep this title from shining as brightly as it could. Outline Introduction Player Creation [...]

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War Against Internet Users, P2P Traffic and Piracy Begins

Was browsing through Slashdot today and saw two interesting articles. It looks like nations, naturally under the guidence of the RIAA/MPAA and similar groups, are beginning to move ‘anti-piracy’ legislation forward. The first part of the problem is to give ISPs complete amnesty from pirated material, which will protect them from litigation and give them an [...]

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Watch Higher Quality YouTube Videos

It seems that YouTube is slowly rolling out support for higher quality videos. All you need to do is append the argument &fmt=6 to the URL to enable the high quality video. Here’s an example: Low Quality Click here for High Quality NOTE: Not all the videos have been converted yet… there are like a billion of them, so [...]

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YouTube Video Optimization is Bullshit

Do you post movies to YouTube? Do you notice from time to time, that your movies can sometimes end up looking like utter shit, while others look awesome? Well I do… and I’ve spent the last 2 days reading through post after post, page after page of “How to create better looking YouTube movies!” or [...]

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