This is not new. In fact, news about it has been spreading since late February.

For most of us that are somewhat involved in YouTube one way or another, we would probably not put the words "YouTube" and "high-resolution" within the same sentence.

I mean, seriously, quality is definitely not what YouTube is all about. But all this is about to change?

It turns out there is a little something that you can add on to the end of a YouTube URL to have it play a high-resolution version of the same video. (But of course, the video has to be somewhat of higher resolution to begin with, logically speaking that is.)

Here's the catch.

Apparently not every video has been re-encoded into the higher quality version yet (if ever).

According to this article:

I've been reading around about this, and it looks as though newly uploaded videos are being converted a few hours after they've been added. And no one really seems to be sure as to whether it depends on the format of video (AVI, WMV, etc...).

So... Is it ready or is it not? I'm a little confused here.

Anyhow.

Based on what I've read up, all it takes is to add &fmt=6 onto the end of any YouTube URL. And you'll get...

I did an experiment using Blogger's Treat Ep 1 with the URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srLL1R68UPM

And adding &fmt=6:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srLL1R68UPM&fmt=6

The results won't exactly as I've expected.

Sad but true, Blogger's Treat on YouTube, the "show" that I'm currently hosting still looks... Well... The same?

(In other words, still not high-resolution.)

According to the same article as above:

If the YouTube video just sits there loading then that is a sign that the video has not been converted to the higher resolution yet. To really see the difference you should view the video in full screen mode by clicking the button in the bottom-right corner of the player.

Well, it's loading fine. So I guess it's converted? Or is this the so-called high-resolution we're talking about already? (If it is, I'm a little disappointed.)

I guess YouTube is trying to go HD. But as of now, I don't think there's anything new to look at yet.

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