YouTube is a fun place to watch videos from all over the world, but it's never been known for visual quality. Since streaming large video files over the internet to lots of people is extremely expensive, Google (which owns YouTube) has been slow to embrace ultra-sharp video quality. It added a "high quality" option a while back, but that just brought some videos up to a standard resembling the minimum you'd find at competing sites.

If you're a stickler for quality, it's time to rejoice, because this weekend Google seems to have finally overcome its concerns. Any video you upload that's 720 pixels tall or greater will be watchable at a high resolution; viewers just have to click the "Watch in HD" option that appears at the lower right corner of the video.

Search YouTube for "HD" and you'll find many such videos, including a trailer for the new Ghostbusters video game, and the hugely popular "Where the Hell is Matt?", a montage of a man doing a fun dance in locales all over the world. The YouTube team haven't officially acknowledged this change on their blog yet, but you can bet they'll offer an explanation eventually!

This story around the web: