I did wonder though, say you upload a 50mb clip and a 5Mb clip which are the same content and duration but different quality - would YouTube convert both to identical size files? You'd think probably not. And wouldn't a smaller file size mean the movie will load/start quicker? I would have thought so.

I notice that for one of your YouTube movies, Renton, the version labelled 'for 56k dialup' seems to load a lot quicker than the same movie labelled 'for fast BB'.

That would seem to suggest that there IS a benefit to loading up dialup sized versions in addition to higher res versions (particularly with the kind of extended news coverage material you're loading, Renton).

Again. I'm not a YouTube expert so I may be talking out of my elbows here, but it seems to make sense.

Jason, yes it looks like you now have the capability of loading up to 1Gb files using the YouTube loader.

Thanks Ian. I thought there was a benefit also, which is why I did it.

And while of course it is nice to have better video, in these sort of clips it is the audio which is most important.

I was at my daughters place last weekend, out in the country on a terrible phone line. They are on dialup and it is absolutely painful to experience how long it takes them just to connect to the web, let alone do any search or downloads. It would take forever for them to get anything it takes me secs to get. The incredible slowness of their connection would be a severe disincentive to me to even go on line! The only way they can get a better connection is to go via satallite but it is too expensive for them at the mo.

It was such people that I thought I was catering for...

Hopefully someone who understands these things better than me will confirm or rubbish my logic!

The thought of going back to dialup now fills me with terror. I've had broadband for over a decade and 20Mb broadband for over a year. It would be like taking my whizzy middle-age crisis car away and giving me back the piece of junk I learned to drive on twenty five years ago! Noooooooo!!