See the above screenshots of a new YouTube service specifically aimed at being watched on TV? It’s at www.youtube.com/tv, as announced by YouTube. YouTube says the site is available for the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. When you visit it on your computer, you’re redirected to the normal homepage.
However, Ron – who took above screenshots from his computer – explains the following hack to view it anyway (HTML’ified):

1. Install User Agent Switcher 0.6.11 for FireFox
2. Set Mozilla/5.0 (PLAYSTATION 3; 2.00) and Opera/9.23 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Internet Channel/1.0; en)
3. Go to http://www.youtube.com/tv
4. Press F11 (FireFox full screen)
5. Connect your PC to the TV (See how-to videos)

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YouTube has apparently changed all videos on its site to play in widescreen format. Because most videos on the site were originally uploaded in a ratio closer to 4:3 (the standard size used on non-HD televisions), most videos are playing with horizontal black bars on the side. Some videos (like this one ) are taking advantage of the full space, but are shrunk down to the normal size when they’re embedded elsewhere.
It seems that YouTube is either doing A/B testing or that the changes haven’t propagated to all servers (if that’s even possible) – hard refreshing on videos seems to alternate between the standard video player and the widescreen one. But it’s a widespread change, as hundreds of tweets are pouring in in about the switch to widescreen.
Widescreen YouTube videos have been spotted before now and could be enabled using a tag in the video’s URL, but this seems to be the first time that the feature is activated by default. The change may be related to YouTube’s recent announcement of full-length films from MGM, which pits it directly against Hulu.

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