YouTube announces plans for 4K

Google’s YouTube is to migrate all the videos on YouTube to its V9 compression standard as it prepares for 4K, according to Matt Frost, head of strategy and partnerships for Google Chrome.

Frost made the announcement at the OTTtv World Summit, saying “4K is the new 3D,” adding that device makers don’t want to repeat mistakes with a lack of content. “For us at YouTube, trying to satisfy the consumer demand for 4K content, we know that actually the answer isn’t VP9 or HEVC, it’s the next generation of the technology… YouTube is going to be migrated to VP9. It is currently supporting VP9 streams. The best path to 4K video for YouTube right now is VP9.”

Frost added that YouTube had also made a “very significant move towards HTML5,” though admitted there were still flaws to the markup standard when it came to video: “We’re still seeing some inconsistency from site to site with HTML5. The goal when you put forward a standard is to have people implement it in a standardised way. Unfortunately that’s not always the case.”