Hi-Definition Rollout and New Landing Pages on YouTube

We have two developments that we would like to share with you: the expansion of our HD player and a test of three new landing pages designed to help you find the news, music and movies on YouTube that matter most to you.

HD on YouTube

Starting today, if you click the "watch in HD" option below any HD-enabled video, the video will automatically play in widescreen – so you can find out where the hell Matt is in glorious HD, if you so wish. As part of this launch, we have created an HD Videos area where you can browse videos uploaded in the HD format. In anticipation of your questions – including how to encode your videos to take advantage of this new feature and how to avoid the dreaded "windowboxing" – we have prepared an FAQ in the Help Center. Hopefully you'll find any technical information you need there, but feel free to post follow-up questions to the YouTube Community Help Forums.

New Video Landing Pages

News, music and movies are huge categories on YouTube and as a result it can sometimes be tough to find exactly what you're hoping to watch. In a bid to smooth your path to the perfect video, we are testing three new video landing pages: youtube.com/news, youtube.com/music, and youtube.com/movies. The news page will be populated with breaking stories from around the world as well as news drawn from the Google News service; music will feature rising videos alongside playlists dedicated to different genres; movies will showcase some of the most popular short and full-length movies on YouTube today. We'll keep a close eye on how these pages perform with a view to rolling them out in other categories.

With these developments we are hoping to improve your viewing experience and make it easier to find the content you want to watch. Leave a comment and let us know what you think…

Happy holidays and, as always, have fun watching!

The YouTube Team