CBS Does About Face on HD

As we noted earlier, CBS is testing an HD version of its video player. This caught our eye since CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith was pretty anti-HD just a few months ago. So we fired off a quick note to Smith, who was ready for us. Here’s his (unedited) response:

Was waiting for this.
Thankfully, am not a politician and the Internet is not Washington, ie times change fast and we can ‘change our minds’ or be wrong. Totally cool with you calling CBS/me out.

What’s changed: broadband adoption rates and compression speeds are making it easier for the user today vs yesterday. No comment wrt advertisers yet. 80% of the video market is still YouTube and they don’t seem to care about HD. So maybe we’re crazy. Or maybe pro content is different than semi-pro.

What’s key no matter what is that we have to solve for what users want and if it works and is easy – then roll it out. Also keep in mind, Labs is made to be a lab, not sure how we’re going to implement it yet. This is a flex of tech muscle, we can do a lot in this new world and need have these tech monsters like Soohoo and his team in Silicon Valley breaking land speed records. HD Player was built in 6.5 hours.

A few months in Internet time is a few years in real time, so we won’t accuse Smith and CBS of “flip-flopping,” (or even try to Swift-boat him). The better-lookin’ video online is, the better off we all are.

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