YouTube releases new interface made for television screen

YouTube XL Released; It’s YouTube Made for the TV [Mashable]

YouTube has a new interface for users that seek a simpler, television optimized experience on the web. It's called YouTubeXL, and the name fits. Everything in the new interface is larger, from the video controls to the font size of each video's title. But, unlike the recently released Hulu application, everything that YouTubeXL does, it manages to do within the browser. It's not a separate application.

Everything in the new interface appears to look like a set-top box menu, leading many to presume that YouTubeXL is trying to make a play for users that want to connect their computer to a television to watch YouTube videos. Everything in the interface appears on pages of fixed width and height, so there's no need to scroll around in the web browser, further optimizing the experience for television.

But, the one thing that YouTubeXL lacks is the same thing that the regular interface lacks when it comes to user interest in watching YouTube as a replacement for television - there's not much in the way of quality programming. YouTube excels at offering users the latest viral video clip, but I can't imagine many television viewers that would use this interface to regularly watch YouTube content in place of traditional cable and broadcast programming.