YouTube has begun testing out HD-quality videos on their site, finally giving users the ability to watch 720p resolution videos and not the degraded quality of current YouTube uploads.

The new videos are over 80MB large and are assumed to be H.264 encoded mp4 files, the same format as those available from the iTunes HD store.

According to Wired, all that it takes to have standard videos upgraded to the 720p resolution (if they were taped at a high enough quality) is a small "hack."

To do so, take the URL of the video and add &fmt=22 to the end.

A good example to try this on is this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&fmt=22

As you can see, I have added the &fmt=22 to the end of the URL. The quality is very good and it is good to see YouTube taking a step forward. Obviously the video sizes will be larger and make take longer time to stream if you have slower Internet connections, but the quality is much improved.

It's about time they upgraded. The day stage6 died was a sad, sad day.