Originally, our screencast episodes were hosted on S3 and serve up using a generic HTML5 video tag. As an experiment, all videos are now available on YouTube, with each page using an embed. You can subscribe here:
... and the playlist for all episodes is here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6M727mLU02OZDvn2e1uoBmLKEHqLaCfv
YouTube does a lot of extra marketing though its suggested videos that may promote viewing, and subsequently, learning. This is the main motivation for this change, and has nothing to do with cost or performance, both of which S3 handled beautifully.
My concern though is that YouTube is quite aggressive with downgrading the quality of video. All episodes are recorded in 720p (1280x720 pixels). When viewing an episode on a table or phone, the HTML player does not give you the nice quality control button found on their website.
This is an experiment, so if you are seeing video quality issues, please let us know. Switching back is easy.
Happy New Year and all the best for 2014.