David Rodriguez

[Update 12/04/08: YouTube now allows for HD streaming. and
YouTube has enabled Widescreen embeds.

Updated 11/24/08: YouTube defaults to 16:9 player format, but what does that mean for the web video industry?]

YouTube’s been going under some mega changes so far this year and now they’ve updated their new player to resize itself to true widescreen resolution. For right now that only pro’s that I can notice between the new widescreen player versus the older player is that if there are widescreen black bars the majority of them will be cut off.

Is this really all that newsworthy? I say no, but the question is why does YouTube find it necessary to release a widescreen format player? There’s got to be something else that this new form of a player can offer that the old one didn’t. Hopefully they’ll let us know what exactly that is soon enough.

Right now because their new player does not embed onto third party sites we can’t show you the differences directly within this post. You can see an example here. Make sure to turn on and off the old/new player to see the differences.

YouTube Widescreen Player

I’m good at photoshop.

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  • 16 Responses to “YouTube Widescreen Player”

    1. Will Johnston | May 12th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

      Hey David,

      I was looking for a way to embed the widescreen player eariler and I came across your post. I thought you might be interested to know that I actually found a way to embed it. The details are on my site.

      Will

    2. Hanief | May 28th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

      I noticed that widescreen will be enabled if you add &fmt=18 at the end of the video url.

      The bad thing about &fmt=18 is, it will take some times to load for a PC with slow internet connection.

      &fmt=18 also means high quality video viewing (and widescreen supported).

    3. guorbatschow | November 22nd, 2008 at 1:45 pm

      I just found out how to have widescreen youtube videos by default :3

      http://foolrulez.org/blog/2008/11/youtube-widescreen-video-enabled/

    4. YouTube Goes Wide | November 24th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is [...]

    5. YouTube Goes Wide : VCsAndAngels – Venture Capital / VCs, Angel Investors, Startup News, Etc | November 24th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is [...]

    6. YouTube Goes Wide | American News World – News And Technology | November 24th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is [...]

    7. YouTube Goes Widescreen « The Cords of Billroth | November 24th, 2008 at 9:30 pm

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is activated [...]

    8. A Hassan | November 24th, 2008 at 11:02 pm

      for some reason, my youtube player seems to be widescreen.

    9. YouTube Goes Wide | virology.tv | November 25th, 2008 at 12:22 am

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is activated [...]

    10. LankyFrame » Blog Archive » youtube widescreen | November 25th, 2008 at 3:00 am

      [...] http://www.stuffwelike.com/stuffwelike/2008/05/08/youtube-widescreen-player [...]

    11. YouTube?????????? | November 25th, 2008 at 6:01 am

      [...] YouTube????????????????????????????????????????????????????4:3?????HD??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????YouTube????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Twitter??????????????????????????????????????YouTube???????????????????????????????URL????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????YouTube????Hulu????????MGM?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????YouTube??????????????Blip.tv ?YouTube???????????????????????????????????????????????????Vimeo?SmugMug????HD??????????????????YouTube????????????????????????????CrunchBase InformationYouTubeInformation provided by CrunchBase[???]????Namekawa, U? ShowListings(“arc3″); ShowListings(“arc2″); AddClipsUrl = ‘http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20081124youtube-goes-wide-2/’; AddClipsTitle = ‘YouTube??????????’; AddClipsId = ‘2CBE02C952CFE’; AddClipsBcolor=’#78BE44′; AddClipsNcolor=’#D1E9C0′; AddClipsTcolor=’#666666′; AddClipsType=’1′; AddClipsVerticalAlign=’middle’; ????? ??????? [...]

    12. YouTube Goes Widescreen (16:9)! | MarketingBlog.NET: Online Marketing Journey | November 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am

      [...] its site to play in widescreen by default, and not the standard ratio of 4:3. They’ve had the option to go widescreen in the past, but now it’s their Default. As a result, most of the videos have these [...]

    13. Daniel | November 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

      A similar guide based on YouTube’s recent changes is available here:

      http://danielmcormond.com/2008/11/25/how-to-embed-widescreen-youtube-video/

    14. Liam Teague | November 25th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

      Youtube seem to constantly add new features just for the sake of it, with a lot of them serving no decent purpose. A widescreen option is a good idea i guess, but 99.9% of videos on the site are 4:3, so why make it the default? It just means pretty much all videos have annoying black spaces either side

    15. YouTube Goes Wide | News Information Technology | November 25th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

      [...] YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is [...]

    16. MaatC | December 1st, 2008 at 5:57 am

      Time to adjust I guess: :)
      http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=kLYQKAnDn1E

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