Maybe you know this, but just in case I give you the information.
I start testing YouTube HD the other day and the quality is good except when playing normal. But I test the Youtube embled player using my test website and I notice the following.

When I went to my test site, the quality still like crap, then I went to youtube.com, log in to my acct and under the setting I change the playback option to “High Quality”, saved then go back to the website and I was amazed with the quality of the video. The problem is that every customer needs to have youtube acct to make this change or I hope youtube change they setting for normal playback.

Here is a test site. (Note this website is for Spanish church, I record they services every Sunday and I’m creating they website. First two video, are upload in HD)

Media (http://www.ibdelagracia.com/media)

If you have youtube acct, please clean your cookies before going to this website, that way you can see the before and after.
Thanks and let me now if you have any questions.

I'm pretty sure that if you append &fmt=22 to the end of the address everytime it appears in the code that you must paste into your website, it will force the highest quality within the frame dimensions specified. I only did this once to try it and it worked for me. If I am wrong I hope someone more knowledgable will jump in and help us both!

I so wanted that to work Ken using the &fmt=22 you suggested but i had no luck on a little test i just did... Just thought I'd say. It would be fantastic to find a way of embedding the high quality stuff just wondering how it worked for you? maybe i did something wrong! thanks

Hi David, the other day I tried to embed a file and it didn't work for me either. Maybe YouTube disabled that trick for embeds? Links with &fmt=22 still bring people to the HD video at YouTube though. I also tried &fmt=18 in the embed code,which should force the HQ version, and that didn't work either. YouTube seems to be changing every day lately...

Maybe a Google search can bring more light?

Best regards

Hi David, I just found this while doing another search How to harness HD on YouTube. (Hint: It ain't easy, yet.): The Social Path (http://www.thesocialpath.com/2008/12/how-to-harness-hd-on-youtube-hint-it-aint-easy-yet.html)

It seems the string is now "&ap=%2526fmt%3D22" for HD embeds.

Best

Indeed it is. In addition I've read on forums elsewhere some folk claiming that it actually takes a few hours for the HQ embed code to start working! That makes no sense to me, but last week I had one HQ embed not working, and then it came to life a few hours later...

It is of course possible that we all had the same problem at precisely the same time, and at that time YT had indeed turned it off for maintainance or to implement an upgrade. To support this I've noticed there are now new embed options: different pre-set sizes; frame on/off; new colours... No default to HQ or HD as yet though.