It’s interesting to see that YouTube has announced it’s move towards bringing a widescreen format to it’s website. Here’s the basic announcement:

We’re expanding the width of the page to 960 pixels to better reflect the quality of the videos you create and the screens that you use to watch them. This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don’t worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player.

This is not the first time widescreen videos have been spotted on YouTube however it’s a definite shift in that this will be the default format and uploads will be expected to follow in this format, even if it’s not what user’s expect.

A number of sites are talking about how this is just one of a number of moves that YouTube is making to start making inroads into the living room. The availability of higher definition movies, full length movies and live streaming all point in this direction. Many items we live with today have managed to become part of our everyday lives, from intelligent shoes all the way down to Christian books. It seems Google is working hard to make YouTube fit into this category, all they need to do now is improve application availability and make sure the Cloud is always available and I’ll be ready to hook up my TV.