We increased the downstream limit to 3.5 mbps to accommodate HD video.

I agree that a more distributed CDN would improve performance for our international customers and this is on the long term list, although I can't tell you when we might get to it. Datapipe is very well connected though. Their data center is Newark, NJ peers with just about every ISP you have ever heard of, and then some.

As for Pro features, many personal photographers like the cname support, the lack of phanfare branding on albums, and the flexible subsite structure that allows them to publish sets of albums for community events they are involved in, without opening up their main site to the world.

Looking at us compared to the competitors, it basically comes down to the tools. Our tools are the best in the world on Mac, PC, Web and iPhone. And there is a good ecosystem of supporting plugins, etc.

Oh, and we also have the gold standard of slideshows.

When 1080p video makes sense, we will support it. Until then, its just a marketing check list item with no real value to the consumer.
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Hi Andrew. I'm considering signing up for phanfare and perhaps pro just for the hd video feature. As brian indicated, the other pro features just aren't useful for family albums. Perhaps you might want to introduce a middle tier just to add hd video support? Otherwise, springing for a motionbox subscription would cost less than premium -> pro.

On the issue of streaming hd video, I observed that smugmug's 1080p video streams just fine for me. This is even though I am in asia, potentially at the end of a very long pipe and bandwidth delay product. And of course, this is because smugmug uses a real content delivery network (akamai) which datapipe cannot compete with for performance. I've read with interest 2 forum posts on video streaming issues: http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=2435 and http://forum.phanfare.com/showthread.php?t=2241.

1. Is there still a 2mbps downstream cap, or does that only apply to images and web/dvd video renditions?

2. Any chance of going with a content delivery network like akamai, limelight, etc?

On the hardware requirements to support 1080p playback today – if my 3 year old macbook can play it, surely more than 1% of computers can play it back?

I am voicing my opinion that it's lame not to allow all your paying customers access to this great enhancement. As a Premium customer I belive I am entitled to give feedback. For you to get hostile or diminish my concern is not what I expect from someone at your level.

Republishing my personal email to you – not cool. Don't email me personally anymore,. thanks.

“Video got better for everyone with a new player, but HD will be pro only. Sorry. Gotta pay the bills around here, unlike google ” Andrew

To clarify… you house our video as HD but will not allow us to playback that content unless we pay double. So you can pay your bills?

Rethinking my investment!

1) Would be great to have similar Hi, Med, HD buttons that are present in the “standalone” player

2) My suggestions would be to put another checkbox in the runtim slideshow options panel that allows to “mute background music”

3) Understood but as you say: will need tweaking

2) This all depends on the type of a video. If it's dialog then obviously you don't want music, but if it's a clip of a sports game you might prefer the music to silence. There isn't any option of adjusting this right now.

3) The player estimates your bandwidth, then does some math to decide how much of the video to buffer so that once it starts playing it thinks it won't have to stop to buffer again.

All of these things will need tweaking over time.

Completely agree with your assessment of 1080 Vs 720, most PCs will not be able to display or stream 1080.

A few feature requests/questions that I submitted to support:

+ It looks like video in the slideshow mode is using low or medium quality. Why not high or hd (maybe auto-detect)? Or at least provide user an ability to choose. I prefer slideshow mode when showing/viewing my albums so having lower quality video in that mode is not cool

+ Album music should pause or mute (currently volume is lowered) when playing a video.

+ HD mode seems to buffer about 30% of the video before playing. That seems a bit excessive

Thanks and keep up the good work — phanfare is getting better and better

HD content is still only being generated on YouTube by less than 10% of all users. The article you quote lumps even the commercial offerings on YouTube which greatly exaggerates the numbers coming from “family” users like yourself.

Last, YouTube has severe limits on how many times you can upload to each account, and the privacy therein. You want to use Google, you lose control, but not with Phanfare. That's the point.

It's worth the Pro upgrade, and is also what the competition is doing.

We don't show ads and are not backed by the significant cash flows of Google's highly profitable search business. You should realize that Google does not make money on YouTube. It loses a ton of money. And as a free user of YouTube, you have very little standing with them. Try to contact their support team and ask a question!

As for the 720p versus 1080p issue, we aimed at a good customer experience. Try to download and watch a 1080p video on the web. It does not work, plain and simple. 99% of monitors are not large enough, and 99% of computers can't play them back without hardware support, which is not built into the flash player except at full screen. Even our 720p video runs at 3 megabits/second. Our guess is that fewer than half our customers have the bandwidth to stream that.

When 1080p video makes sense, we will support it. Until then, its just a marketing check list item with no real value to the consumer.