Yesterday, if you viewed a video on YouTube in HD format, it would display in a large format. It would basically move down all the content on the right of the video and increase the video size to the full browse width. Here is a picture:
YouTube seemed to have changed it now. When you view a video in HD, it no longer increases the video size to the full width of the browser, instead it just keeps the current video size. Here is a picture:
I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it is being noticed by several YouTube viewers. A YouTube Help thread has a couple people complaining about the change.
The way to force the full width, is to append &hd=1 to the end of the URL, so for my last video recap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS0tTyJG9SA&hd=1.
Also, YouTube has increased the file size limit from 1GB to 2GB the other week. In fact, I was the first to notice this change, and some sites credited me, while others did not.
Forum discussion at YouTube Help.
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rustybrick in Other Google Topics at July 2, 2009 8:33 AM
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Did YouTube also recently alter its encoding for non-HQ and non-HD videos? It seems like all videos uploaded over the past few weeks (both my own and others) are much clearer in the default viewer, even without switching to HQ or HD.
Compare this video, uploaded last week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5VihiYYzm8
To this one, uploaded several months ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRUmOxlZ-iU
They're both mine, so I can verify that the original resolution of both uploaded files was identical.
Posted by Matt Ryd at July 2, 2009 10:14