AUDIO VIDEO NEWS

The one claim - okay, one of a few claims - that Hulu had over YouTube was the quality of the video. But, crafty YouTube viewers have scrounged around and found a few HD-quality videos mixed into the regular, pixelated, sputtering content we all know and love.

This new content is most likely real HD 720p, H.264-encoded mp4 files, better than the previously viewable "high quality" content.

This new material will require a faster connection and more powerful PC than before, but if you have the ability, it should be impressive, and give YouTube the quality-hike that they need to compete with Hulu in the eyes of Hollywood.

Keep reading for the hack needed so you can watch either the high-quality or 720p videos.

To view the high-quality videos, add "&fmt=18" at the end of the url you're attempting to view. Now, to view the 720p content, add "&fmt=22" to the url.  Thanks wired.com for the code. Wired.com also has a neat demo of it in action, but we thought it was much more amusing to show this guy explaining how to do the older high-quality hack. Just change out the "18" to "22" and let us know what you think.

I gotta go. There are a lot of fuzzy videos that I need to re-watch. —Leslie Shapiro

Wired.com