It dawned on me as I was trying to work out how to do this just now that youse lot might need to know too, so to save you some Google Searching, I am going to pass on my newly acquired wisdoms. FORSOOTH!

Yes. Youtube now lets a person watch a video in HD, if they so wish, by clicking a button on the player on the website. But since most people wouldn’t think to do such a thing, as a content embedding human, you might wish to FORCE THEM evilly.

EG: Here’s my latest video as Youtube’s embedding option lets you, um, embed it:

See? Rubbish. BUT! Click the HD button, and you get this:

Much less rubbish! Achieving this is relatively simple, and involves hacking the Youtube code.

Here’s the code for the first video, with the bits you’re going to need to replace in bold:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Hwc9I8qvPTU&hl=en&fs=1“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Hwc9I8qvPTU&hl=en&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

Dig? You’re gonna want to replaces from & to the end with the following:  &hl=en&ap=%2526fmt%3D18

And your new code will look like this:

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Hwc9I8qvPTU&hl=en&ap=%2526fmt%3D18“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Hwc9I8qvPTU&hl=en&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

OK? Sweet, don’t thank me, thank this guy, cos he told me.

— By Akira The Don on Monday, March 23rd, 2009