NYTimes Launches HD Video Platform

The dawn of text-based online newspaper reporting is approaching. More and more online newspaper sites are gradually integrating a new form media in delivering timely, relevant and sometimes citizen video journalism. A good example of these online newspapers is the NYTimes which just rolled a new video platform. And mind, the company has even made it high-definition video and not just your usual “YouTubeish” types.

The New York Times Video Platform now uses a video player using a high-definition format and the high-definition videos are peppered into the NYT home page, on various NYT blogs, and of of course on the site’s very own video library.

The video platform is made possible through Brightcove’s video streaming technology. NYT is an investory of Brightcove and it is but logical that NYT uses its video platform to showcase the slew of videos it produces monthly, which can go as high 100. The NYT videos feature breaking news and analysis, enterprise and investigative reports done by Times journalists worldwide. NYT also displays video contents coming from CNBC, MSNBC, Reuters and Bloggingheads.tv including more than 15,000 movie trailers and clips.

Specifically, the NYT video platform features:

• high-definition videos displayed on a widescreen format at 16×9 frame
• cleaner layout on a black background video library (which is very cool indeed)
• individualized video pages for playback
• continously updated list of “most viewed videos” across the site
• tools for sharing videos to social media sites including Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mixx and Yahoo Buzz.

While visiting the NYT video platform, I noticed how their videos stream flawlessly considering that I’m on a slow bandwith network connection at home. I did get some streaming pauses from time to time but they are not as long as the pauses when I’m watching YouTube videos.

And those NYT videos are definitely high-quality and professionally done. Hope it gets more interesting content in the future. If only those videos can be embedded freely on other blogs and sites similar to what YouTube offers, then NYT would certainly get tons of site traffic coming in to its site. Anyway since I can’t do that, just follow this LINK to see a sample HD video from NYT.

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