here it is, in the old square. The code I used is:

<object width=”425” height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&hl=en&fs=1*here*“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&hl=en&fs=1*here*” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425” height=”344″></embed></object>

To make it 16:9, let’s just work on the width, that is the numbers I highlighted in red. Put a 566 in it.

<object width=”566” height=”344″ data=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”src” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1″ /><param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true” width=”566” height=”344″ /></object>

Now, this is a nice widescreen. But damnit, this quality sucks. But here comes the trick to get also a higher quality.

<object width=”566″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/uILu8XEDvbA&hl=en&fs=1&ap=%2526fmt%3D18” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”566″ height=”344″></embed></object>

Where before I wrote *here* I’ve added this code (“&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″)that lets you embed any youtube video in high quality. I believe there’s some other method, this is the one I use and that works pretty well.

Now, you can make your youtube videos of any size, just change the width and height of the box in the two places where I told you, and find the size you like. It can be very small, as well as very big.

Now, just a note, I noticed how WordPress (the blog engine) deletes some parts of the embed code when you save the post. In case you’re using WordPress too, change the code straight away before the editor deletes the width and height. Weird things.

Not everybody is happy with changes…

Seems like YouTube failed to put an option into the personal profiles to turn off 4:3.

Something like this?

A few of you might remember my articles a few days ago, how I discovered that YouTube has a hidden widescreen setting, and found out how to enable it.

Now it seems that YouTube has finally taken action and set widescreen view as default. That means, you won’t have to modify your cookies to get the video into widescreen format anymore.

Now we just need to find out if there is a way to get the old 4:3 back :P

Well I said that after I deleted my cookies, it went all back to normal 4:3…

Good thing I use a Macbook though… thanks to time machine, I got those cookies back, and after while of trial and error and woxxy as tester, I found out the secret to widescreen YouTube…!

This just works for Opera, as it is the only browser where you can edit cookies. (If you use another browser, skip this part and read further down about how to do it with javascript!)

Now load a YouTube page and… voila! If all worked out, you should have gotten widescreen video :P, test with this video

EDIT: Thanks Milo for the hint with javascript, this is also a good solution, albeit your code does not work properly on some browsers.

HINT: This is platform and browser independent. The screenshots show Opera on MAC OS X, but it could just as well be Internet Explorer on Windows XP. As long as you have a way to modify the cookies (for example, using the javascript injection), it will work.

It’s true that some sites already report that there are widescreen thumbnails on YouTube already, but they are just speculating about whether widescreen will be incorporated now.

However, this is what I saw, when I watched this video.

Old 4:3 videos are displayed on a widescreen as well:

Some pseudo widescreen videos, which were submitted in a 4:3 format with black borders on top and bottom, look like this:

I wondered about how that happened. I use Opera on a MacBook with 1280×800 screen resolution.

So I tested it on Safari:

Doesn’t seem to work, does it?

Firefox doesn’t show widescreen either:

I thought it was an Opera thing, so I tried it on my Windows PC, running Opera as browser. I can’t get the same effect there. Not even when I changed the screen resolution to 1280×800 and restarted Opera.

I also asked a few more people. But nobody seems to have a clue. What’s going on?

edit: I deleted the cookies on Opera, and the widescreen is gone… and it didn’t come back when I signed into my YouTube account…

A wild guess is that they randomly distributed cookies to test widescreen on a few people before they roll out for everybody. Time will tell what YouTube is up to…

edit2: I ended up finding out how to enable widescreen mode. Continue reading here!