Vimeo, the video sharing site owned by InterActivCorp (IAC) and run by the same folks as College Humor have finally released HD support for movies. To get an idea of the quality that brings to the world of online video go here to see a clip of a pretty massive looking garden spider. You can switch HD on and off to see difference. I suggest viewing it in full-screen to really see the improvement.

To my knowledge, our site is the first place you can upload and watch video in true, honest-to-god high definition (1280×720). Right now basically every other video site (YouTube, Dailymotion, etc.) is doing video at 320×240. … Things are only going to get better, especially as Adobe releases H.264 support in Flash, which should be coming very soon. We’ll have a press release on Monday.
-Blake Whitman, Community Director of Vimeo

I’m not sure how Joost and other Internet Television like services are going to contend now with the availability of high quality video streaming directly in your browser. It’s interesting to note that Vimeo seems to have an advertising partnership with Canon as all their ads push canon products and HD Canon cameras. With the price of HD capable cameras eventually going lower and lower, HD video online will be ubiquitous. Also with Flash moving towards supporting higher quality video means that most current video sites will not have a large technology leap to implement HD Support. This is a the next generation of online video.