I'd just like to point out that "But it's in 240p!" wasn't entirely serious. I transcribed it because I thought it was a really good answer to the question and more people would see it that way, and I'd gain some karma a Less Wrong to boot.

I, for one, appreciate it. Thanks for not wasting my time.

I'm sure it's a fine video, but I prefer transcripts since it doesn't require me to get out my headphones. So I'm glad he did it.

The resolution complain is particularly strange when you figure that if a transcript is allegedly good enough, then surely you can just listen to the video instead.

On YouTube audio quality degrades with resolution. I avoid watching 240p videos whenever I can first and foremost because of their horrible audio.

In this case I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. This isn't classical music after all, it's a guy talking.

Yeah, AM radio is still used for even the largest talk shows, and it's far from perfect quality (which is why AM is rarely used for music, but it's fine for speech). Likewise landline phones especially long distance calling was never all that great sound quality but it never stopped you from picking up the phone when someone called.

I can’t stand it. Judging from the transcript, at least whoever did that seems to feel the same. (Since humans are not terribly dissimilar I would be willing to guess that actually many other people feel the same.)

That’s all I’m saying.

Maybe you can 'just listen'. I'm hard of hearing, please don't presume to speak for me.

I read it in Richard Feynman's voice. :)

Totally agree. I was perfectly happy to watch this in 240p, Feynmann was such a legend.

When you think about it, and maybe I feel like this because I just watched Feynmann, but it's totally insane that we can watch videos on the Internet at all! Even in 240p, which apparently, nobody likes.

Exactly. A transcript is 0p which is decidedly worse.

If p stands for "lines", how can you claim the text is written using 0 lines?

Surely you know that 'p' in relation to video is an abbreviation for pixels. And 1080p video isn't the equivalent of specifying "font-size: 1080px" in your transcript's CSS.

I don't think it stands for "pixels". It stands for "progressive", as in "progressive scan". As opposed to "interlaced scan", which is what 1080i refers to.

Why do you think I said it was equal to specifying the font-size? As I said, it practically refers to the number of lines. Font-size has nothing to do with that, directly. You can't specify the number of lines in CSS, AFAIK. CSS is for styling. Lines are content.

Anyway, I was just trying to point out how nonsensical it is to compare the "resolution" of a text with a resolution of a video. And if you do, I think it's interesting to think about that the number actually is dynamic, as is, it depends on the container and so on. Which is actually quite an appropriate analogy, since it is often easier (IMHO) to think profoundly about something you're reading (where you control the tempo), in comparison to a video, where you constantly have to follow their tempo. Yes, you can rewind, but if you do that, I think you'd agree with me that it'd be easier with a transcript.

My 0p comment is silly math (take 240p, remove 240p worth of video, the remainder is 0p) to make a point that 240p is actually good enough to watch since what the author presented cannot be watched at all.

Yes there are many benefits to having a transcript, but those arguments apply just as much to 1080p as to 240p.

Zero lines of video?