New year, faster YouTube

Experts say New Year’s resolutions work best when you share them with friends, so here’s one of ours. This year you’ll see more of YouTube in HD on more screens with less buffering, so you can enjoy the videos your favorite channels put out every day.

Our friends across the industry are getting on board to help in a big way. Starting in 2014, you’ll see products from major mobile, PC and TV partners that are using a new, more efficient video format called VP9 that gives you HD quality at half the bandwidth.

That’s techno-speak for letting you watch that awesome HolaSoyGerman video from your phone in HD even as you get barraged by Snapchats, see the fine detail of finger painted Morgan Freeman even on a slow web connection, or one day, watching Devin Supertramp’s Australia montage in 4K from your shiny new big screen TV without crushing your home network.

Here are the some of the partners that will be adding this new format to their products:

If you’re at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show, stop by the LG, Panasonic or Sony booths to check out a YouTube in 4K demo on VP9. Our friends at the YouTube Space LA have been helping Devin Supertramp, Audi, Sam Tsui, Red Bull, and Wren The Reaper make some epic videos.