My Internet Connection at home is relatively slow, less than 1Megabit/second down and shared between the family. And I’m often using a 3G modem because I travel a lot. Thus I rarely look at YouTube because it takes too long to load.

One time while downloading some Youtube, it occurred to me that there might be a way to permanently select using low quality so that videos download much faster. Its annoying when Youtube videos stop and start all the time.

In the settings:

Select this.

Restart your browser, and it should be done. But it doesn’t seem to work, or at least I couldn’t’ confirm that it worked. . Regardless of browser restart or reboot these setting don’t seem to take effect. I’ve checked my iPad but doesn’t seem to work in the YouTube app either. Maybe it’s just me but if you have any feedback, I’d appreciate hearing about it.

Safari 5 extension

Then I was looking at the YouTube5 Safari extension

This plugin puts an overlay over your youtube video that exposes a number of preferences such as resolution. Choosing a lower resolution if useful when on slow Internet connections such as 3G modems or broadband (in my case).

You can find more about the Safari YouTube extension at http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/10/27/youtube5-version-2/