YouTube is by far the best watched online video site and with full 1080p HD coming to the portal, viewing is best done on a large screen TV set. However, as it transpires from numerous blog posts in the US, from December 2 YouTube will only work with contract partners and block access to its API by other set-top boxes.
What we understand is that a number of boxes that have no agreement with YouTube will be blocked from accessing the service and hence be no longer able to bring the YouTube videos to the big screen.
In a response to the blog stories, YouTube issued the following statement: “Since July of 2008, YouTube’s Terms of Service has restricted implementations for televisions based on our APIs. YouTube has been in active discussions with various developers on how best to implement YouTube on set-top boxes and TVs. There are several companies, however, that have deployed solutions, like video-scraping technology, to circumvent the rules and violate YouTube’s terms of service. Companies that have negotiated agreements to use our APIs, like TiVo, Sony [Electronics], Panasonic and [Sony] PS3 are not impacted.”
The move by YouTube seems similar to the one by Hulu, who has also started to restrict the use of its content by aggregators including Boxee not so long ago.
