How has YouTube changed the medium of entertainment?

My First GP Blog assignment and my first blog post ever! This is so cool because I'm late in posting it. Back to the topic!

Youtube has amazingly changed the medium of entertainment in such a short time , that we didn't even realize it. For example: Youtube took Television to a different level. Television is very interesting yet irritating at times because you do not get to watch the programmes at your pace, it is at the broadcaster's pace. So what has Youtube done? They allowed us to watch our favourite TV shows or Advertisement on the internet over and over again at our own discretion with just a few clicks away. There are some people who uploads videos as soon as they are released such as webmasters of anime websites, this make it easier because i don't have to wait for it to reach the shores of Singapore. On the other hand, Youtube may not have changed the medium of entertainment but it just created an alternative medium for everyone else. Almost everyone knows about Youtube, but that does not mean that they make use of it.

The word change means replacing Television, so why does companies such as Hitachi, Sony, Toshiba, etc invest in research on HDTV (High-Definition Television) when they know that Youtube is going to take over the Television, they should just invest in LCDs or Projectors. This is because Youtube is not going to replace Television! Television still owns the market because you dont have to make your own programme, so all you have to do when you reach home after a long day of work is to switch on the TV and enjoy the bright moving pictures without advertisement on the side of the window, just the video itself. Not only that, there is a limit to what you can do with youtube and their countless videos. Why would i watch my favourite Anime/Movie in a pixelated window that is less than 1/4 the size of my average 17" LCD when i can buy the Blue-ray DVD and watch it on my 40inch HD LCDTV at 1080p which costs almost the same as my personal computer with Super Fine Picture quality? Also why is the TV advertisement still a multi-billion dollar industry? Not only that, their database is so vast that i wouldn't dare browse through everything, not to mention their congested network which makes the buffering of videos very slow due to the insane amount of people watching at the same time.

This is an example (also my favourite Music Video ever!):

Lets go back even before February 2005 when Youtube was created, Was there videos online? Yes! Does people watch those videos? Yes! So, what was the medium of entertainment at that time? Internet! In 2003, when I first came to Singapore, I realized that internet was fast(before that there was no Broaband in Malaysia) and i could download and watch my favourite anime(at that time Naruto) an hour after it was released on to the internet. So why wasn't videos that popular before Youtube came about? Youtube advertised itself, It has one of the easiest interface to use and you do not need to register to upload a video unlike other websites in the past. People loved it because it was Free, easy to use, interactive, fast(at that time) and they can keep their identities hidden. So more and more people started using it and explored the limits of Youtube.

So what kind of freedom did Youtube give the world? Youtube allowed us to create our own videos ,extent our limitless creativity and made some of us famous! not only that these videos also made life more enjoyable for us. Some expressed their feelings in these videos and may have touched the world or some just wanted to create a comedy. Either way this is a new entertainment and the medium is the internet and the computer.Therefore I conclude that YouTube never changed any medium of entertainment, However They have created a new of entertainment; Video Blogs, Hilarious videos of friends for e.g walking in to a glass door at a fast food restaurant without noticing it and so on! If they say that a picture is worth a thousand words? How many words is a video worth? There are an average of 30frame per second in a video, So if a video is 5 minutes long, it would be worth: 5 X 60 X 30 X 1000 = 9 Million Words. That saves us the trouble of blogging. =D


The coolest Homemade Music Video[Jerry Chang (born August 31, 1981) better known by his stage name JerryC, is a Taiwanese guitarist and composer. His most famous work, "Canon Rock", has become an internet meme. The song has garnered much media attention; his rendition has been featured on newspapers, blogs, television shows and radios worldwide. In the January 2007, Jerry was featured in the profiles section of an issue of Guitar World Magazine, along with a tab transcription of Canon Rock in the featured songs sections.] :

This is a funny HOMEMADE video that will waste 15 mins of your life just like that: