YouTube, which recently rolled out 720P quality has redesigned its pages to include a widescreen player. As more content is created in 16:9 resolution this should put YouTube in greater competition with sites like Vimeo which cater to and have been winning over professional producers.
It should also increase average time viewing and help YouTube to offer more of a lean-back experience for those seeking to deliver more than a dog on a skateboard which would make the site more valuable to advertisers.
Of course YouTube unlike Vimeo still isn’t charging for usage, and as more users upload content for high quality playback the site will continue to be a larger drain on Google’s otherwise stellar margins. So lets hope YouTube’s boatload of cash can last, or that they figure out the whole contextual targeting to sky-high CPM correlation soon.