[UPDATE: I’ve updated this post and it is working as of 3/7/2014]
Recently I was helping out with the Customer Dish learning center where we needed to embed some HD YouTube videos. We wanted to embed them as HD so the user did not have to hit play and then select the better quality. Turns out the hd=1 option does not work anymore, the new player automatically selects the ‘best’ resolution for the size of the embed, which is 480p or lower when your embed size is less than about 850px wide.
But there’s good news! There’s a parameter you can add to the embed code to preselect which resolution to play at. The user still has the option to change it but it will start playing at the preselected value.
Here’s how:
- Go to Share -> Embed on the video page
- Look for ?rel=0 in the src attribute of the embed code
- Add &vq=hd720 or &vq=hd1080 after ?rel=0
- Should look something like: src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/IA0pVPkBHjo?rel=0&vq=hd720“
Now you should be good to go! Your videos will load in HD automatically and also have a full screen button.