The Internet battle for the television set is heating up. Content providers who stream
video on the Web appear to be making a concerted effort to go beyond the PC screen and into the living room.
Last week Hulu.com unveiled its desktop app, letting users take the streaming service to the television. Google is returning fire with its own video service, YouTube. YouTubeXL is a redesigned version of the popular video sharing site that has been reconfigured for Web-connected TVs.
YouTubeXL was also designed with consoles, such as the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, in mind.
The reformatted YouTubeXL is stripped bare when compared to the traditional interface. While the redesign won't win any awards for aesthetics, it does make the site less cluttered. User comments, for example, have been stripped away from YouTubeXL.
The navigation buttons, such as top rated, research searches, favorites, etc., are much larger, presumably to make it easier to navigate the site while watching on a television.
Video control buttons -- play, pause, stop -- are all larger, making it easier to control a video, especially if a user isn't planted directly in front of a PC.
Google showed off the revamped changes to YouTube to a small group of reporters yesterday, according to reports. YouTubeXL currently has a limited selection of videos as Google works with the content owners to hash through licensing agreements.
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