There is however an easy way to enable Youtube high quality playback for all videos that have been uploaded and processed to deliver high and low quality versions. Always clicking on the “watch in high quality” link is the only option for users who do not have an account at the video portal.

That quickly becomes annoying if you watch dozens of videos a day. Users with an account can define the quality in the user’s profile. That’s the easiest and best way for users with a broadband connection who always want to watch Youtube videos in high quality.

The setting can be changed in the Playback Setup of My Account. The easiest way to reach the menu is by clicking on the Account link on top and selecting Playback Setup from the left menu once the Account interface shows up.

Checking the “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available” box will ensure that Youtube will always stream the high quality version of a video – if it exists – to the user as long as the user is logged in.

Bandwidth and server costs accumulated to more than a million Dollars each month. As I said earlier the service was highly popular because of the great video quality which exceeded that of most other portals.

Tulluis informed me just a minute ago that a Stage 6 Clone was announced that would open its gate on April 29th. The homepage of the new service is Divxit and there is unfortunately not a lot to discover right now. Servers and GUI seem to be online already and the Divxit Core converter nears completion which seems to be the last step before the portal goes live.

It would be really nice to see a comeback of Stage 6. A service like that needs either a very potent company in the background or find a way to monetize the website properly so that it does not have to be closed soon after release. Monetization of video portals is not easy because companies know that the click through rates are horrible.