YouTube Goes Widescreen and HD(?)

Posted at November 25, 2008

If you’ve been on YouTube the last day or so, you may have noticed that the player box has been extended and most of the videos on the site now have black bars on either side, much like an HD tv set when it shows 4:3 programming. Here’s a screen shot:

So why would YouTube do this when the vast majority of user’s videos aren’t in that dimension?

Easy.

HD, baby.

Check out this video in amazing 720p high def on YouTube.

To see if a video is in YouTube in widescreen/HD, add this to the end of the URL string:

&fmt=22

Here’s the other very interesting thing. You can embed these widescreen HD videos as well, with a simple hack of the embedding code. Here’s the code:

<object width="480" height="397"><param name="movie" value="(VIDEO EMBED URL)&ap=%2526fmt%3D22"></param><param name="wmode" value="window"></param><embed src="(VIDEO EMBED URL)&ap=%2526fmt%3D22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" width="480" height="397"></embed></object>

Thanks to Webmonkey for the code. This is very interesting. I’m getting stuttering HD playback here – how is the playback for you?

Filed under: HD, Video, YouTube

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