YouTube dominates online video viewing, so it comes as a surprise that just on Friday the Google-owned company finally decided to stream full-length television shows on its website. Now you can find episodes of popular shows such as "MacGyver" and "Dexter" muddled in with YouTube's user-generated mishmash.
This move into showing content longer than the previous ten minute limit comes shortly after another video-centered Website, IMDB, started broadcasting full-length movies and television shows. Unlike IMDB and Hulu.com -- the main competition for both sites -- YouTube streams only television shows, not films.
The YouTube site isn't screaming with advertisements for this new offering. I had to type "MacGyver" into the search box and then spot the tiny advertisement in the right-hand corner of the results screen in order to find it. For shows like "Dexter" and "Californication," I went to the Showtime channel.
Like most YouTube videos, the picture quality wasn't fantastic, even with the capability to dim the background lights and frame the picture in faux curtains. For the hundredth time since discovering Hulu, I longed for its comparatively crisp image quality and great audio.
Google added advertisements to the television programs. They come at the beginning and several times throughout -- far more frequently than Hulu.
I ripped an episode of "MacGyver" to see if the full-length content would play offline. It took a while to download the 217MB file but it played fine through my VLC Media Player coming in at 480 by 360. The quality was up to YouTube standards. Viewing in full-screen was just okay; tolerable for laptop playback on the go. The ability to rip videos to your hard drive and view them offline -- even though it's a violation of YouTube terms of service -- puts this service a few notches above the others. But the nagging problems of YouTube's video quality definitely set it back again.
It seems that as more Websites adopt streaming video, the more disparate the quality becomes and the fewer options are available. Most of what's offered on the Web is also available through Netflix's streaming service and playable, via a Roku box, directly to your TV with great quality. That, to me, is still the best option for watching television on the fly. My personal favorite among online streaming video is still Hulu, which adopts more programming and exclusives as the site matures, and boasts the best viewing experience by leagues. YouTube's new service will come in handy for those who visit the site regularly, but it lacks in quality.
