'YouTube Feather' debuts in beta

It seems like barely a day goes by without Google announcing yet another change or improvement to YouTube, and today's no different. This time, YouTube is tossing out a beta trial of its new "Feather" player, designed to cut down on load time for some older (read: slower) PCs and folks with less bandwidth.

As the video hub pushes more HD video -- and more recently more 1080p video -- out, the problem for some users has become more acute. YouTube on its blog points out that some users can wait several seconds for video to load (hey, sometimes I'd trade one of my kids if I could get a video to load in "several seconds").

 YouTube's Feather feature automatically defaults to standard quality and it reduces the amount of bells and whistles available (how many times have you actually left a comment on that video of the cat calling 911 anyway?).

 YouTube launched "Feather" today in TestTube. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

 For more:
- see the YouTube blog entry

Related articles:
YouTube planning tio caption videos 
YouTube going hi-def