Reduction in High quality video setting

Is it just me, or does it look like the current High setting in the video player has been reduced to the quality of the old Medium setting?
With the new HD versions available it seems that they simply renamed Medium to be called High. This is definitely a downgrade for non-subscribing users who can't access the same quality of video they previously could.
Am I imagining this? Does it seem like this is the case to anyone else?

I thought I was just seeing things. Even so, I'm not gonna jump to conclusions until I hear about this from others. I still find the videos to be perfectly watchable.

 I cant really tell the difference yet between HD and High. Is this just me? I seems like it takes a few extra seconds to buffer the video on HD, but I still cant read the text in Ship Simulator: Extremes and am getting some compression artifacting. The videos Dave posted earlier as tests were way better.   
 
It may be 720p but they dont look that clean to me compared to other gameplay of games at 720p I've seen. Again, is it just me?

I don't see why they'd choose to reduce the quality. Your probably just imagining it.At least I hope you are.

I was about to say that you are full of shit, but then I looked at a few vids myself. And yes they do look crappier now. I don't know if it is being done purposely or not. 
 
One of my reasons for not subing was that I was perfectly fine with the quality of their videos. I'll be kind of pissed if they downgraded their default quality to try and get people to sub.

"  I cant really tell the difference yet between HD and High. Is this just me? I seems like it takes a few extra seconds to buffer the video on HD, but I still cant read the text in Ship Simulator: Extremes and am getting some compression artifacting. The videos Dave posted earlier as tests were way better.    It may be 720p but they dont look that clean to me compared to other gameplay of games at 720p I've seen. Again, is it just me? "

Its is still has 1500 bit rate

well I am downloading both versions of the wargames tang. one posted on daves blog and the other from the download option on the video page. 
 
already the files are different sizes 
 
video page: 121MB filename:   vf_wutang_wargames_072310_3500
Daves blog: 177MB   http://media.giantbomb.com/test_encoding/test_wargamessp_3500.mp4
 
And daves video looks WAY better IMO. Are not all the videos in HD yet or what?  
 
well the HD video has a larger filesize  High is 51mb and low is 41 for the wargames tang. 
 
edit: they have to be working on the videos or something. The HD version must be the high version or something. the file from dave's blog is 1280x720 but the one from the video page is 640x360. They must not have it updated 
 
The mailbag from today looks 720p, although maybe its the camera, the compression is bad. But it looks to be 1280x720. But the HD videos I've watched so far are not 720p. The trailers are crisp HD though. Quicklooks dont look so good.

Could be something to do with the new compression and all that.

I downloaded the latest Game Room quick look in HD earlier, but it was in 640x360. Hope they get it fixed soon. I'm demanding it 'cos I payed for it.

Most of the videos are the same quality. The only ones I noticed that were in HD were the new mailbag videos.

Video conversion and uploading large files to the site will take a lot of work and a lot of time.

They discussed on the Membership Bombcast that the HD videos wouldn't be immediately available.

Whew, I was dling the P4 ER, and didn't want to be dling medium quality when i choice high >_>
 
...imo looks the same to me

It may very well be that this is simply the new MP4 format compressing differently than the old FLVs. Then the (I assume) MP4s you've been downloading would look the same.
Whatever the case, I apparently like the quality less than I previously did. Especially in full screen, which is my preferred method to watch Giant Bomb's long form content.

" Is it just me, or does it look like the current High setting in the video player has been reduced to the quality of the old Medium setting? With the new HD versions available it seems that they simply renamed Medium to be called High. This is definitely a downgrade for non-subscribing users who can't access the same quality of video they previously could.Am I imagining this? Does it seem like this is the case to anyone else? "

Looks exactly the same to me, it's not HD but still pretty good imo. I can't even make use of HD on the net most of the time, because the videos load slower than they play, and I can't be bothered to wait. I guess that's because most servers are in the US and I'm in the EU.

The videos look worse to me. I always had the videos on high setting before and now I can tell the difference immediately. I imagine this was done to make the premium HD video option look more attractive, which is again a rather uncool thing to do on top of the whole bombcast fiasco.

" @MattC said:

" Is it just me, or does it look like the current High setting in the video player has been reduced to the quality of the old Medium setting? With the new HD versions available it seems that they simply renamed Medium to be called High. This is definitely a downgrade for non-subscribing users who can't access the same quality of video they previously could.Am I imagining this? Does it seem like this is the case to anyone else? "

I'm sure you're imagining things. The funny thing about the medium setting is that it provided exactly the same video quality as the low setting. It was a social experiment type thing and sort of an attempt to save bandwidth costs. Waaaaay back in the early days of the site there was a separate medium quality video quality. They got rid of that to save money with their video host a long time. They left the medium option in, but had it play the same quality video as the low setting because they figured that if they just had a low & high settings most people would select high, however if they left the medium setting in, people would select that, view the low quality video, and still be happy with the quality. So making the high setting the same as the old medium, would mean making it the same as low, and then re-encoding all the video's to a new, even lower quality, for the new low quality setting, which I'm pretty certain they wouldn't have done. "

High quality looks the same as it always has to me.

I was thinking that myself.

" @MrOldboy:  You are getting what they said. HD. HD is a resolution, not a measure of quality. Now for the flipcam vids they can't control the quality much. The camera does it for them. But the professionally shot stuff, the quicklooks are decided on the final export after editing so they have much greater control. So I expect that stuff to be good quality. The placeholders aren't ideal but it's going to take forever for them to re-render 3 years worth of video content in HD, and they couldn't link to nothing. At least going forward they will be up day 1 in HD. Just give them time to work the kinks out. "

does look more fuzzy o noes =( 
 
feels like the labeled high hd and got rid of the middle setting