YouTube Releases the Google Video Quality Report

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."

Comments

Weak article, weaker report

[Gothmolly]

"Results from your location are not yet available. Please check back soon."

Translation: You don't live in one of the 3 metro areas we tested, but we hired some bloggers to crow about our new "service".

Re:Weak article, weaker report

[JMJimmy]

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.

Re: Weak article, weaker report

[ModernGeek]

Link to the tool instead of sifting through several lame blogs: http://www.google.com/get/vide...

Link to the actual report tool

[by (1706743)]

http://www.google.com/get/vide...

Re:Link to the actual report tool

[MobyDisk]

That's not actually a report. It is a marketing page + a tool that tries to tell you your own results.

A report would contain a chart of various ISPs, their results, and other factors such as geographic location. None of that information is available.

Re:Link to the actual report tool

[Anaerin]

I guess you're not seeing the "Compare providers in your area" tab that shows at the bottom-right under the results graph? 'cause that showed for me, and listed both ISPs available in my area.

Re:Link to the actual report tool

[Opportunist]

I'm fairly sure it is available.

At a price, of course.

Re:Link to the actual report tool

[swillden]

The only one who benefits from this is the ISP who will no doubt tout it in endless commercials.

They will if their rating is HD Verified. If they're not doing so well... not so much. And if your area has multiple providers (unfortunately not as common as it should be) you can click on the "compare providers" to see if there's someone who can do better for you.

Google's clear motive here is to push the ISPs to provide consistently high bandwidth, so that YouTube works better.

Hmmm.

[ColaMan]

"HD Verified" sounds suspiciously like a way to extract more money out of someone.

"Oh, you want to watch youtube? No, no, your standard account doesn't have that level of service.You need to get a Youtube HD Verified account. Only $9.95 a month extra!"

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or ammunition for the net neutrality fight. Not sure exactly how this data does that but it feels like it. If so, go Google. The more hard data available (like the Level3 congestion blog post), the better.

i applaud the effort

[kiddygrinder]

but i find this less tool a lot less useful than if they'd just let videos buffer to the end

Re:i applaud the effort

[amaurea]

I recommend youtube-dl. It's an easy-to-use open source command line tool for downloading videos from youtube and many other sites. It's a part of the package repositories of most linux distributions also. I usually start a download (youtube-dl link-to-video-page), and then immediately point mplayer at the in-progress file. So there's no delay compared to watching it in the browser, but seeking is much faster, and you get to use a decent player. And if the connection is slow, you just wait a bit.

If you prefer not to use a command-line tool, there are firefox extensions that do this kind of thing, like netvideohunter and downloadhelper, but they are a bit sleazy and support fewer sites, I think. They also can't be automated the way youtube-dl can.

Also smacks of Google strong arming people

[Sycraft-fu]

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.