When we’re thinking about net browsing the first thing that pops to mind is the old school scrolling through static text pages. The second will be Web 2.0 and rather quickly after that everyone lists YouTube to be high on their priority lists. Whatever service is being used by hundreds of millions of people, it has to be supported by a netbook.

If a mini notebook wants to be popular it needs to be able to play streaming video services without a hitch with extra attention to YouTube as the most popular video sharing service. The most often voiced concern is a valid point and cannot be discarded with a shrug; are these mini computers fast enough to decode such content?

The answer is not a clear yes or no unfortunately, we have to distinguish between High Definition and standard videos as they’re two completely different parts of the picture. Standard videos are what Intel Atom processors are designed for and play well, while with some higher resolution pieces you’ll have problem in case you have the average N270, N280, N450 or Z520 single core Atom, you’re in trouble.

I conducted a non-representative research with the tools available to me and I’ve got to say that you can get along with a netbook even if you use it mostly to watch online streaming content. Metacafe is a bit twitchy, some providers already migrated to HD resolution as a default setting, YT stays standard definition for now. They also have a beta program going on that I’m very happy about, and it’s the Youtube Feather.

It’s a part of the site in the works, you can opt-in to take advantage of the lighter controls on netbooks. It’s basically the same thing with a stripped down UI that helps low-end computers and mini laptops to cope with videos better, the bad news is that it’s not too much when it comes to HD.

I took Tim Minchin’s(he’s all kinds of awesome, by the way) official stream as a point of reference, since most of his videos are available in all qualities. 360p works perfectly on any netbook. I’m a little concerned about z520 processor based ones, but those are rarely found on shelves anymore. 480p still works well on my default-netbook-performance N270. The image doesn’t get much more crisp but you’ll notice the change in audio. There are a few dropped frames but you won’t have problems.

720p unfortunately is off limits and I haven’t even tried 1080p to avoid deep embarrassment. In normal movies you have on DVD or on your hard drive you can go all the way up to 720p with very few dropped frames, videos appearing in a browser, not so much.

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