Yahoo! has relaunched their video service and first impressions are well, impressive. One of the thing's I've always disliked about YouTube is the layout, design and lack of compelling material as soon as I hit the front page. YouTube is best when you know exactly what you're looking for. But
Yahoo! Video has some nice features that will definitely pull me away from YouTube for casual video surfing.
For starters, a featured video is displayed on a nice, wide video player - today's video is a preview of the new Indiana Jones movie. A bottom bar features editor's picks in categories like Featured, New, Popular, Music, Movies & TV, Sports and Funny. Farther down the page are Featured Videos, Popular Now and People - a collection of certain users' videos. The top bar has a My Video section for your playlists, Networks, a quick Upload tab and, of course, a search bar.
YouTube may have the definitive edge of having the most active users and the most content, but for pure video browsing within a nice layout Yahoo! Video gets my vote. And I'm really liking the widescreen video player.
By the way, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens May 22.
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