Well yeah, YouTube's 'HQ' is not really HQ in a sense of a quality of a DVD, the picture is still not clear enough (and 'HD' isn't DVD quality either, but you can't expect a video bitrate of 7200 kbps for an online real-time watchable media stream). But still, the HQ button matters a lot. Just compare columns 'Standard' and 'High (non-default)' in the following table and you'll see why the differences are dramatic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Fo ... ison_table" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(Actually, the MP4 container is the default one for HQ, the page is a bit outdated.)
Also note that AAC is superior to MP3 at the same bitrate (provided that you compress an audio of a CD quality or so.)
But of course for those vids that aren't uploaded in a good enough quality, HQ doesn't make much difference. Just to compare, my latest video (called 'Angry Spy at Work', sorry for the advertisement
) was 172 MB originally, after uploading it's 38.5 MB in MP4 and 20.1 MB in FLV. That just shows again that HQ is nearly twice better than NQ.
Just watched ep3, the goldeneye music sniper bit made me chuckle
