YouTube has been offering viewer the choice to watch some videos in "high quality" for a few months now. High quality videos aren't exactly high definition, they're just encoded at higher bit rates than your typical YouTube video. That means the video will probably look a bit sharper and cleaner.

Up until recently, you could only watch high quality videos by visiting YouTube or if you happened to run across a site where someone applied a little magic trick to their embedded videos. But now YouTube has added a new feature to its embedded video player that lets you toggle between high and normal quality videos wherever you happen to find them.

All you have to do is click play to start a video and then click the menu button in the bottom right corner of the playback window. You'll notice a box that says HQ. If it's grayed out, it means the video you're watching isn't available in high quality. But if it's black, it means you can click to watch the higher quality version of the video.

You can check out an example after the break.

[via CrunchGear]