At long last, we may be able to watch videos on YouTube in high definition, thanks to Adobe’s latest version of it’s web video software: Flash Player 9. The new player supports H.264 video, which is the same as used in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video players.

I tested the new player out by going to the Adobe Flash Player 9 download page.  I uninstalled my older version and installed the new one and tested it watching their demo video here.  The video looked excellent, but I don’t think I got the full effect as the hardware on my computer is too old to get the full experience.

I’m glad to see there is hope for higher quality web video on the horizon.  Hopefully sites like YouTube will take advantage of this and perhaps within a year or so HD web videos will be standard.

[via Read/WriteWeb]

Sample footage of the Canon PowerShot TX1 courtesy of Oceanline. I’m seriously considering getting one of these and selling my Panasonic PV-GS320. Don’t get me wrong, the PV-GS320 is an excellent camcorder, but transferring the video to your computer is kind of a pain in the neck. I think the main reason I want one of these is I’d rather store video on and SD card instead of Mini-DV. The TX1 is smaller than a deck of cards, shoots high definition video and goes for around $499.

Here’s some sample TX1 footage showing off the slow motion features…

And more sample TX1 footage which looks like was encoded very well for YouTube:

Don’t let these YouTube clips discourage you… if you really want a good example of the quality, watch these two sample videos on DPReview (scroll near the bottom of the page).

Also see this Canon PowerShot TX1 review