Digital Video Update: Youtube, Flash, High-Definition (Column‪)‬

I last devoted an entire column to new developments in video technologies in May, 1998. At that time, I wrote about such new developments as the DVD, MPEG-2, and HDTV ("high-definition TV"--slated for first broadcasts in the US later in 1998). Today, the next-generation DVD standard has split into two competing formats (Blu-Ray and HD DVD), compression algorithms for digital video have advanced enormously, and US TV viewers are still waiting for the full rollout of HDTV. The big buzz recently about video has been something quite different: the enormous boom in the popularity of Internet sites such as YouTube for sharing video clips. We will explore in this column these and other developments in digital video and what they might mean for language learning. YOUTUBE AND VIDEO SHARING